Research & Reports
The 7% Solution – Leading VA Players Vying Over GLWB Base Increases
This year is shaping up as one that will be marked by heated competition among variable annuity issuers over the generosity of their Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits (GLWBs), and we will be watching to see...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from December, 2007
We conducted our regular monitoring of variable fund-related filings to wrap up the last month of 2007 and found evidence of investment trends we’ve been seeing in the industry. New funds-of-funds (F-of-Fs) of different types...
Picking Up Where We Left Off – Another Spate of New VA Withdrawal Riders
It’s only January but we need to comment again on variable annuity living benefit proliferation because, bridging the very end of last year into this one, a number of insurers have filed new or enhanced...
Variable Funds-of-Funds Keep Increasing In Number, Accumulating Assets
Compared to the bull market years, the role that underlying sub-accounts play in the sale of variable insurance products has certainly been diminished, however, a storyline that holds much interest for us is how money...
Reflecting on the Year Almost Past: 2006 in the Variable Annuity Business
As the holiday season is now upon us, in our last commentary of the year we’ll take the opportunity to quickly consider how things went for the variable annuity business in 2006, using currently-available data,...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from November, 2007
In November, variable insurance fund filing activity with the SEC was pretty vigorous, and we identified 13 new registrations, notable among them some funds-of-funds (F-of-Fs) and several portfolios with a global or emerging markets focus....
Contract Compilation – Our Remarks on the Latest VAs Filed This Year
In the interest of remaining on top of what’s happening with variable annuity contracts, and given the fact that we haven’t touched on them for several months, this week we’ll give our observations on chassis...
What the Competition Dictates: Continual Refinements to VA Benefit Features
This year might be winding down, but in the variable annuity space we are still encountering registrations of new living benefits and enhancements to existing ones, although a good portion of them won’t actually roll...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from October, 2007
After conducting our usual compilation and review of variable fund-related filings, for October we identified 12 new registrations, most of them funds-of-funds (F-of-Fs), and in this report we’ll review them and also comment on interesting...