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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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The Price of De-Risking: Sales for Most VA Issuers Dropped in 4Q11

After reviewing variable annuity sales of selected publicly-traded insurers from the fourth quarter of 2011, we’re of the opinion that, for that time period, industry-wide deposits declined a bit sequentially. However for the full year,...

Results Are Coming In – and VA Sales Appear to Have Cooled Off

As we write this, stock-traded insurers are in the middle of earnings season, and 4Q11 variable annuity sales data are being released. So far, most companies we monitor regularly have been reporting sequential declines in...

“The Daily Show” – Hartford Enhances Ratchets on New Benefits

The recent filing by Hartford Life of two new variable annuity benefits that feature highest daily account value growth has the industry buzzing, and we think for good reason. Observers of the market will be...

“Stretching Exercises” – That Might Pull VA Products in New Directions

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...

A Busy Beginning – for Product Moves Around the VA Business

Through the latter months of last year, we saw a number of variable annuity product changes in the pipeline whose details were not fully fleshed out. Because of this we got the feeling that most...

A Season of Change – In Which VA Insurers Are Moving Tentatively

Many variable annuity issuers have been filing changes to their products – mostly of the de-risking variety – but they have not taken what we would call drastic measures. We think this is because most...

A Quick Look Back – on 2011 and its Significance for the VA Industry

As we have done in the past, we reserved our last weekly commentary of this year for a reflection on how the variable annuity business performed in 2011. It is our way of getting a...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from November, 2011

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...

Winding Down – There May Be More Surprises Before the Year Ends

As we write this, product filing activity around the variable annuity business has slowed down a bit, but there remain numerous modifications in the pipeline, quite a few of them not scheduled to come out...