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Research & Reports

Soleares Research, LLC is a market research and consulting firm servicing the annuity and life insurance businesses. We provide, through our website, periodic articles that cover important industry trends; we also offer clients phone or on-site consultations, executive briefings and presentations. We pride ourselves on first-class customer service and responsiveness to our clients. We aim to be an indispensable resource to the marketplace.
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Back to School – Viewpoints on VA Industry Issues as Q3 Winds Down

The weather has gotten cooler, football season has commenced, and families are back from vacation, all these things serving to remind us that we are coming to the end of the third quarter. In this...

Sorting Through Notable Variable Annuity Product Developments

We continue to see an interesting mix of variable annuity contracts and features coming out, some following the trend towards the simpler and cheaper, others more fully loaded. Regardless of this diversity, we firmly believe...

Reflecting on the VA Industry in 2009: A Time of Shifting Realities

It’s become our custom to dedicate our last commentary each year to looking back at how the variable annuity business performed, to get the evaluation process started before fourth quarter data are released. Thus in...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from September, 2009

During September the rate of variable insurance fund filings with the SEC slowed down a bit – as is the tendency each year – and accordingly there were relatively few new registrations. We think activity...

New Internal Replacement Accounting Could Be Challenging for Annuity Insurers

In the coming months, an issue of much interest to annuity issuers will be that of an impending change in accounting for Deferred Acquisition Costs (DAC) on internal replacements that will impact how companies conduct...

VUL Breeding: Hybrid Policies Mix Protection, Equity Exposure and Liquidity

Variable Universal Life (VUL) policies certainly have a lot going for them in terms of optionality and flexibility, with the insured being able to adjust the death benefit, the timing and level of premium payments,...

A Better Wealth Transfer: Strategies that Move a Deferred Annuity to a VUL

One of the more innovative variable insurance developments we’ve seen in recent years is a multi-faceted strategy whereby assets from a deferred annuity are moved to a variable life policy by using payments from a...

Secondary Guarantees Continue to Be Added to Variable Life Contracts

Generally speaking, we think the path insurance is taking is towards ever more commoditization, with products built for specialized purposes. Such movement has been occurring in the annuity business for quite some time and lately,...