Research & Reports

In this report we’ll provide our usual highlights of recent variable fund filings, and comment on the announcement today from Sun Life Financial that it will discontinue sales of variable annuities in the U.S. To...

As is our habit, we sifted through SEC filings related to variable insurance funds, and in August found numerous changes and adjustments to investment platforms, in particular there were plenty of mergers and liquidations, either...

We thought the month of May was rather active in terms of SEC filings related to variable insurance underlying funds. There was an interesting mix of movement: sub-account platforms were streamlined, new management fee arrangements...

With this report we are getting caught up with variable insurance fund developments from the first two months of this year, and during that time we saw the continuation of an emerging trend: that of...

It’s become our custom with the last report of December to offer reflections on how the variable annuity business performed over the past year, and suggest issues to watch in the future. We admit that...

During November, the rate of variable fund filings is usually rather slow, and the same pattern held true this year. We noticed no new registrations during the month. Insurers appeared to be tidying up their...

In recent years we have tended to see a modest number of variable insurance fund filings during the month of October, and the same pattern held true this time around. There were a few interesting...

The number of variable annuity contracts designed for fee-based financial advisors has been growing of late, and in this commentary we’ll share some thoughts as to the why this is happening, and weigh in on...

It’s time again for us to conduct our monthly review of variable insurance fund filings. We thought the industry was pretty active during September, with insurers making quite a few modifications to their investment platforms…