Research & Reports

In this commentary we’ll get caught up with variable insurance fund filings from the months of April and May, a time period that was fairly active, however we didn’t see a large number of new...

Over the past few weeks we have been occupied with sifting through annual variable annuity prospectus updates, and within some filings we saw adjustments to in-force contracts and benefits that we think provide evidence that...

Now that the first quarter has ended and we are well into the next one, we’ll share some thoughts on how we think the variable industry may have done so far this year. We think...

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...

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...

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...

According to leading industry research firms, variable annuity sales dropped in the third quarter, and we weren’t too surprised by that, given the kind of moves insurers have been making of late. Furthermore we expect...

After reviewing the variable annuity business results of the group of stock-traded insurers we track regularly, we’re figuring that third quarter industry sales were flat to slightly up sequentially, and probably got a little lift...

As the year is winding down we have been thinking that more insurers would consider coming out with guaranteed benefit buyback programs to trim their risk profiles. Late last week we got evidence that such...