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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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Seeing VA Business Priorities Revealed Through Public Insurers’ Q3 Results

The third quarter was a mixed bag for the nine major public variable insurers we regularly track, as all saw sales levels fall sequentially, but apparently these companies don’t feel the results were troubling and...

Beyond the VA “Arms Race” – Towards Meeting Retirement Income Needs

A sentiment we’ve been hearing from industry executives lately is that the variable annuity business already has a plethora of products and features due to the competitive “arms race” that has taken place in recent...

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...

Impressions on Consumer-Friendly Issues for the Variable Annuity Business

In our last report we discussed how insurers are building fee reductions into their variable annuities, which we think is good for the industry in that it may help counter some negative perceptions. This week,...

Publicly-Traded VA Insurers Fare Better in Q2 – as Reported in Earnings Calls

We always look forward to reviewing major public insurers’ quarterly calls during earnings season, as these companies in many ways act as barometers for the health of the variable annuity business as a whole. In...

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,...

VA Sales and the Opposing Themes of Staying Competitive – or Cost-Conscious

We recently took time to reflect on divergent trends within the pricing and structure of variable annuities, a topic that should become more “front-and-center” in the future and cut across distribution outlets, since products and...

Q1 Earnings Calls Continued: Evidence of Further Need for Innovation

With this commentary we’ll resume our coverage of first quarter earnings calls and show how some insurers, due to their scale and ability to offer cutting-edge ideas, have seen resurgence in their variable annuity sales,...

Q1 Earnings Calls of Public Insurers Illustrate Need for Continued Sales Growth

Last week we listened to first quarter earnings conference calls of five publicly-traded insurers who do business in the U.S. variable space, and for some of these companies, annuity sales improved, although surrenders – more...