Research & Reports

Recently we’ve been soliciting opinions (and, we must admit, a few rumors) from our industry contacts on which variable annuity players got some sales momentum during the second quarter, to help us get some early...

Now that the second quarter is wrapping up we figured we’d take a few moments to take quick stock of that period, how the variable annuity industry might have performed. It’s our opinion that when...

As this week begins, we’ve been combing through variable annuity contract registrations – including ones from this year we haven’t commented on yet – and so far we’ve been finding interesting designs and approaches getting...

It’s been rather busy around the industry in terms of tweaks to contracts and features, and by all accounts such activity is going to continue well into the summer. However we do need to stay...

We’ve said this in past reports often enough, that February is always the most active time of year for filings of variable insurance funds, as insurers and asset managers take the month to get the...

This is our customary early retrospective of the past year for the variable annuity business, in which we’ll offer a narrative of how things unfolded chronologically in 2008, the market conditions that arose and their...

In wrapping up our third quarter reporting on selected variable annuity insurers, we’ll say that it seems clear that for now, investors are still reluctant to purchase VAs during troubling market conditions such as the...

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,...