Research & Reports

We continue to see interesting adjustments and enhancements being introduced to variable annuity products, which we think shows that there are still stiff winds of competition around the industry, however muted from the arms race...

With this report we are getting caught up with variable insurance fund developments from the first two months of this year, and during that time we saw the continuation of an emerging trend: that of...

After reviewing fourth quarter variable annuity sales results of stock-traded insurers in our regular coverage group, we strongly suspect that the industry fared well during that time period as well. What remains to be seen...

Over the past few months variable annuity insurers have been filing products that will debut during the May prospectus update season, and in this commentary we’ll touch on some we think are noteworthy…

Two trends we saw last year in variable product investment options were the introduction of portfolios that had some sort of risk sensitive component to them, along with the trimming of platforms to pare down...

It’s become our custom with the last report of December to offer reflections on how the variable annuity business performed over the past year, and suggest issues to watch in the future. We admit that...

During November, the rate of variable fund filings is usually rather slow, and the same pattern held true this year. We noticed no new registrations during the month. Insurers appeared to be tidying up their...

In recent years we have tended to see a modest number of variable insurance fund filings during the month of October, and the same pattern held true this time around. There were a few interesting...

It’s time again for us to conduct our monthly review of variable insurance fund filings. We thought the industry was pretty active during September, with insurers making quite a few modifications to their investment platforms…