Research & Reports
The Price of De-Risking: Sales for Most VA Issuers Dropped in 4Q11
After reviewing variable annuity sales of selected publicly-traded insurers from the fourth quarter of 2011, we’re of the opinion that, for that time period, industry-wide deposits declined a bit sequentially. However for the full year,...
Coming Into Focus – Pending VA Product Changes Are Being Finalized
Last year some variable annuity insurers filed what appeared to be de-risking tweaks to their products, but with key details left undisclosed, and some of these planned changes have stayed in the pipeline for quite...
“The Daily Show” – Hartford Enhances Ratchets on New Benefits
The recent filing by Hartford Life of two new variable annuity benefits that feature highest daily account value growth has the industry buzzing, and we think for good reason. Observers of the market will be...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from December, 2011
With the publication of this report we’ll conclude our regular monthly coverage of variable insurance fund filings from 2011. We thought December was quite an active month: there was a nice batch of new registrations,...
VA Insurers Tread Carefully in Adjusting Products, Launching New Ideas
As the New Year has gotten underway, we can’t say we’ve seen any real earth-shattering variable annuity products as of yet. Indeed, some tweaks and revisions filed with the SEC last year have not rolled...
A Season of Change – In Which VA Insurers Are Moving Tentatively
Many variable annuity issuers have been filing changes to their products – mostly of the de-risking variety – but they have not taken what we would call drastic measures. We think this is because most...
A Quick Look Back – on 2011 and its Significance for the VA Industry
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...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from November, 2011
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...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from October, 2011
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...