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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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Thanks to De-Risking, Sales Were Down for Leading VA Insurers in Q4

By the end of last week we finished reviewing the fourth-quarter earnings reports of selected publicly-traded insurers we watch regularly, and we came away with the suspicion that variable annuity industry sales were probably down...

As Market Leaders Make De-Risking Moves, Other VA Players Follow Suit

Around the variable annuity business, the past few weeks have been characterized by a pattern of activity that goes like this: first, rumors start circulating about a given company making a de-risking change, only for...

Insurers Are Creating More Optionality Within Their VA Contracts, Riders

Due to the constant stream of product changes occurring around the industry, variable annuity insurers are finding they must make adjustments much quicker than ever before, in order to respond to market conditions and moves...

Leading VA Insurers Are Following Through with Pending De-Risking Moves

In this commentary we’ll discuss some variable annuity product reductions from leading insurers that have been in the pipeline and will be implemented soon. It’s our feeling that these moves provide evidence that most of...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from November-December, 2012

It’s been our habit to provide a regular review of noteworthy variable insurance fund filings each month, however during the holiday season there were other product happenings that got us a little behind in that...

Thinking About Retrenchment – and Related Themes Affecting the VA Market

Variable annuity product filing has been a bit slow of late, so in this commentary we will take a step back and reflect on the subject of retrenchment within the industry, how most insurers are...

VA Insurers Are Picking Up Where They Left Off – With More Product Changes

As we get fully into 2013 we’re noticing that a few variable annuity insurers are getting right back into the swing of things, by touching up their product offerings and coming out with new designs…

A Season of Change: VA Sales Fall as Insurers Cut Back on Their Products

The year 2012 was a time when insurers made reductions to their variable annuity products: these moves included the trimming of guarantees, fee increases, closures of contracts and riders, installation of tighter investment restrictions, cuts...

MetLife’s New Index Annuity – An Example of Reverse Engineering

Last week we shared a rumor that a few insurers were planning to come out with renditions of AXA Equitable’s Structured Capital Strategies, a hybrid index/variable annuity, and said we had not seen a filing...