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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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Brief Thoughts on 2014 Annuity Sales – and the Future of the Business

We reviewed fourth quarter and full-year 2014 annuity industry sales and they came out pretty much as we expected they would – variable annuity production was down but fixed annuities, led by those of the...

An Update on Recent Variable Annuity Product and Rider Filings

In this report we’ll get caught up with variable annuity contracts and benefits that were filed over the past month; the batch included a mix of benefit revisions and wholly new ones, many of which...

VA Industry Sales Growth in Q4 Looks Doubtful to Us, All Things Considered

As is our practice each quarter, we reviewed earnings results for selected stock-traded insurers we track regularly, and came to the conclusion that for most of them, variable annuity operations performed more or less in...

Several Insurers Filed New VA Contracts That Will Debut Later This Year

Last week a few insurers registered new variable annuity contracts that won’t launch until several months from now – and some of their key elements not yet fully fleshed out – so in this commentary...

Forethought Registers New VA Contract With Enriched GLWBs

For the most part, variable annuity insurers have been scaling back on the generosity of their guaranteed benefits, but there are a few out there who are not afraid to offer rather aggressive features, and...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from December, 2014

This past December we saw no new registrations of variable insurance funds, but that isn’t out of the ordinary because filing activity usually slows down late in the year. In any event, plenty of other...

Getting Clarity on Transamerica’s Recent VA Product Moves

Last week we noted how Transamerica filed to remove optional guaranteed death and living benefits from one of its variable annuity contracts – something we found quite intriguing – and in this report we will...

The VA Industry’s Product De-Risking Theme Is Continuing Into 2015

In this commentary we will get caught up with recent variable annuity filings – a good number of them involving de-risking – that we think provide great examples of how industry trends and themes that...

VA Sales in 2014 Were Slow Again, Reflecting a Retooling Environment

Each year we devote the last commentary of December to taking a quick look back at the past year in the variable annuity business, and we’ll do so again this time, and also make some...