Research & Reports

As we usually do on each quarter, we compiled variable annuity sales results for 10 stock-traded insurers we watch on a regular basis, because performance of this group has proven to be a good early...

Around the variable annuity industry some insurers are attempting to regulate their rate of business through focused initiatives, whether related to product, distribution, or both. Some are trying to deliberately slow their sales; others are...

Hartford’s decision to discontinue sales of individual annuities has triggered a number of related events in recent days, and we get the feeling that more interesting developments are yet to come. Moreover we believe that...

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...

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...

The month of October was an active one in terms of variable insurance fund filings with the SEC, and we strongly suspect that a number of the changes were connected with product initiatives insurers have...

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...

The volume of variable insurance fund filings with the SEC during the month of April was fairly slow as compared with other months of the year. We didn’t see any new registrations and we figure...

Two trends we saw last year in variable product investment options were the introduction of portfolios that had some sort of risk sensitive component to them, along with the trimming of platforms to pare down...