Research & Reports
Our Q3 Commentary Part I – Variable Annuity Insurers Face a Difficult Time
This is the first installment of our third quarter commentary on variable annuity results for selected insurers we monitor regularly, and next week we’ll follow up on others that have not yet reported. Thus far,...
VA Insurers Are Revising Their Benefits to “Ratchet Down” Risk
To continue discussing our theme of last week, we’re sure that current financial market conditions are forcing variable annuity insurers to re-evaluate the living benefit guarantees they are selling. Third quarter results should provide us...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from September, 2008
In this commentary we’ll return to our regular task of covering highlights of variable insurance fund filings from the past month, and in September we saw a wide variety of modifications made to platforms –...
Making Sense of All the Movement – VA Contracts, Riders Set for Q4 Debuts
This week we’ll comment on an assortment of recent product moves within the variable annuity space, and we must say that we aren’t seeing a major slowdown in the rate of activity, as there are...
Variable Annuity Contract Notes: Checking Back in on the Newest Registrations
Over the past several weeks we’ve taken some time to pore over new variable annuity contract registrations, including those we started monitoring last year, and in this commentary we’ll discuss what we learned from that...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from August, 2008
This week we return to our monthly task of commenting on SEC filings related to variable insurance portfolios, and during August we noticed interesting new registrations and amendments that we believe have a direct connection...
Atypical Designs in Variable Annuity GLWBs Sold in the State of New York
Anyone who’s been around the industry for awhile knows that the state of New York does things differently than most other jurisdictions, usually placing very firm restrictions on policies and features before they are approved....
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from July, 2008
It’s once again time for us to check in on variable insurance fund filings, a task we perform each month, and July was pretty active, as we identified 10 new registrations, with some unique offerings...
VA Deposits, Net Flows in 2Q08 – A Few Bright Spots Amid Cloudy Skies
Now that Q2 earnings season has wrapped up for variable annuity insurers we usually cover, we saw that deposits and net flows of most of them dropped, however a few had increases. In this commentary...