Research & Reports
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from June, 2016
This report will cover variable fund filings from June that we found notable. During the month a significant amount of activity we saw involved changes to sub-advisors and fees…
Another New Contract From Jackson – and Other Recent VA Filings
In this report we’ll comment on a new variable annuity filed by Jackson National – another that will be marketed to fee-based advisors – plus we’ll touch on product filing activity we found interesting from...
Voya Files an Annuitization Offer Again – Plus Notes from Other VA Filings
This will be a rather brief commentary because variable annuity filing activity remains slow around the industry, which is not unusual for this time of year. We will touch on probably the most notable development...
New VA Contracts and Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits on the Way
Over the past couple of weeks we have seen a few interesting new variable annuity contracts and riders come through the pipeline – some of which will be launching soon – and in this report...
Concerning Changes – That are Being Made to VA Products This Year
In this report we’ll touch on the kind of tweaks and adjustments insurers have been making to their variable annuity products lately. Most of the changes follow patterns we have seen around the industry the...
Concerning Q1 Variable Annuity Sales – and Recent Product Moves
Variable annuity industry sales in the first quarter finished how we expected they would – down considerably on both a sequential and year-over-year basis. In this report we’ll take a quick look at the numbers...
We Suspect VA Industry Sales Were Probably Down Again in 1Q16
We just finished conducting our review of first quarter results of publicly-traded insurers we monitor regularly, and for all of them, variable annuity sales fell, thus we suspect the industry experienced a similar result…
More Thoughts on Recent Variable Annuity Prospectus Updates, Changes
In our view, variable annuity product filing activity is still rather slow compared to prior years, so for that reason we’ll devote this report to touching on just a few developments, some which we have...
American General Launches GLWB with Highest Daily Ratcheting
Lately we haven’t seen too many variable annuity insurers make their living benefits more generous, but American General introduced a new lifetime withdrawal benefit yesterday which is now one of the few in the industry...