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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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Insurers Are Developing More Variations on the Investment-Only VA

As the year began, we were confident more investment-only variable annuities were on the drawing board and we were curious as to how insurers might tinker with the concept. It just so happens that some...

More Thoughts on Shapes VA Product Innovation Will Take This Year

Now that we're getting fully into 2014 we're seeing indications that variable annuity product innovations that either got started last year or gained momentum during that time will be built upon moving foward…

Principal Financial to Offer a GLWB Exchange Program – Not a Buyback

It’s our opinion that vintage variable annuity benefits remain problematic for quite a few insurers, and we expect more de-risking measures to be taken over time.  Last week Principal Financial filed a program that will...

Jackson National Moves to Limit 1035s Over the Remainder of This Year

Last Tuesday Jackson National sent a letter to financial advisors announcing the temporary suspension of 1035 exchanges and qualified transfers of assets into three variable annuity contract suites effective October 25. In this commentary we’ll...

Summer Moves on the VA Scene – a Mix of Innovation and De-Risking

This summer has been slow in terms of variable annuity product filings – as usually is the case for the time of year – however we have seen enough interesting things come through to give...

An Update on Variable Annuity Contract and GLWB Filings in 2013

We have been sifting through recent filings of variable annuity contracts and lifetime withdrawal benefits and, while we haven’t been seeing quite as much activity in the pipeline as in past years, we did catch...

VA Insurers Say They Are Managing Benefit Risks – But Still Want to Trim Them

It’s been a while since we checked in on variable annuity guaranteed benefit risk levels, and we were reminded of that fact by MetLife’s recent investor day, where the topic was discussed at length. We...

VA Insurers Continue to Revise Existing Benefits to Trim Risks – and Sales

Over the past year or so we have seen an increasing number of insurers file variable annuity guaranteed benefits that are not entirely new, but rather slightly de-risked versions of existing ones. Last week we...

VA Sales Appear to Have Continued Their Downward Movement in 1Q13

We have just completed our review of variable annuity results for publicly-traded insurers we watch regularly and, based on the performance of those companies, we suspect the industry saw a drop in deposits in the...