
Research & Reports
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...
A Few Comments on Equity-Indexed Annuities in Regards to the VA Business
While our primary concentration is on the variable insurance business, from time to time we will reflect on the equity-indexed annuity, or EIA, and now is a good time to do so. There are a...
Rollout Reviews: What’s New in Variable Annuity Product Features
In our quick look at spousal lifetime withdrawal benefit provisions last month, we commented on some features that were still in the filing stage. It turns out that a few of these were formally launched...
Q4 Roundup: Variable Annuity Results Stay Relatively Strong in 2005
In the second installment in a regular commentary of The Soleares Report, we are going to review variable annuity business fourth quarter reports and consider what happened in 2005 as a whole. In future weeks...
The Leader Board Remains Tight: Reviewing Q3 Variable Annuity Results
In looking at third quarter results for the variable annuity business, we note that some companies with improving sales and market shares did not necessarily see their overall rankings change correspondingly; indeed, some kept the...