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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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VA Insurers Are Fine Tuning Their Products – But Not Always De-Risking

Last week we saw an interesting mix of variable annuity product adjustments filed with the SEC. Some, as should be expected, were reductions to benefit guarantees, but a couple involved enhancing them…

Thoughts on Variable Annuity Change Trends As We Enter 4Q12

Variable annuity insurers have certainly been very active this year in de-risking their products in response to competitive and market-related conditions, however in recent weeks filing activity has slowed down a bit. It could be...

VA Insurers Attempt to Design Attractive – But Manageable – Guarantees

A dilemma for insurers working in the variable annuity space these days is how to offer guarantees without taking on undue amounts of risk. To our minds this consideration is a priority for the industry,...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from July-August, 2012

In this report we’ll get caught up with variable insurance fund developments from July and August. During those months we detected an interesting mix of new registrations, fee and expense adjustments, reorganizations and manager changes…

Newer Annuity Types That Are Emerging During this Period of De-Risking

For the most part, variable annuity insurers are moving away from selling risky benefits, but we think that the process of de-risking will take time, because industry sales are still largely driven by the richest...

As Summer Winds Down, More VA De-Risking Moves are Occurring

Lately we’ve been seeing fresh product reductions taking place around the variable annuity business, and we think that the effectiveness of such moves will depend largely on how each insurer will look, competitively, after making...

Reviewing VA Guaranteed Benefit Assets, NAR Movements From Q2

At different points in the past we have combed through quarterly financials of stock-traded insurers for data related to variable annuity guarantees, in an effort to gain insight on how such benefits might be impacting...

Earnings Season Review: VA Insurers Weathered Q2 Market Dip

We were under the impression that second quarter sales for variable annuity insurers might have suffered due to the drop in the equity markets, along with the effects of various de-risking moves – which are...

VA Insurers are Following Through – With a Fresh Series of De-Risking Moves

Around the variable annuity industry there are some pending product changes that will soon be taking effect that we will discuss in this commentary. In looking at them as a group, we are reminded of...