Research & Reports

In the first quarter of this year variable annuity sales fell, on a sequential basis, for every member of our group of publicly-traded insurers we watch regularly, which makes us pretty sure that the industry...

The year 2012 was a time when insurers made reductions to their variable annuity products: these moves included the trimming of guarantees, fee increases, closures of contracts and riders, installation of tighter investment restrictions, cuts...

Lately we’ve been seeing fresh product reductions taking place around the variable annuity business, and we think that the effectiveness of such moves will depend largely on how each insurer will look, competitively, after making...

As the summer proceeds we expect to see more variable annuity product adjustments and tweaks coming through, mostly in response to recent moves by leading issuers. This is a time when few players will simply...

The summer is usually a slow period for the variable annuity business, with sales dropping off, at least by a small margin. This year, however, it seems that activity has been picking up, most of...

It’s our sense that, unless there is a dramatic (and sustained) rebound in the financial markets near term, most variable annuity insurers will be in de-risking mode. For that reason we expect more of the...

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...

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...

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...