Research & Reports
Earnings Review: Several Insurers Saw Stronger VA Sales in 2Q19
Late yesterday we concluded our review of results of selected stock-traded insurers and our main takeaway is that some of them experienced growth in their variable annuity businesses in the second quarter, although we are...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from July, 2019
In our view, July was a very busy month in terms of variable insurance fund filing activity, a time in which we saw a number of interesting developments that we’ll share in this commentary...
John Hancock Files New Variable Annuity Benefit Buyback Program
This year we’ve seen a number of variable annuity guaranteed benefit buyback offers, and in this report we’ll cover one filed not long ago by John Hancock. It is tentatively scheduled to commence in the...
More Thoughts on VA Living Benefits – and Clarifying an RMD Provision
In this report we’ll discuss industry trends in election rates of guaranteed living benefits (GLBs), citing data from LIMRA, and make a correction to our coverage last week of a new lifetime withdrawal benefit from...
An Update on VA Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits and Rate Sheets
In this commentary we’ll review a new variable annuity guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit (GLWB) filed recently by Nationwide, and touch on some recent trends in rider rate sheets, which seem to point to a de-risking...
Update: Variable Insurance Volatility-Managed Portfolios
This spreadsheet contains our coverage of variable insurance volatility-managed portfolios for first quarter 2019. By our count, at the end of the quarter there were 213 such portfolios in operation, containing $271 billion in assets…
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from June, 2019
This will be a fairly long commentary because variable insurance fund filing activity picked up nicely last month – among notable developments was the filing of a newly-formed trust containing a large number of fund...
Update: Summaries of New VA Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits Filed With the SEC in 2019
This table updates our coverage of new variable annuity Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits (GLWBs) filed with the SEC so far this year and contains summaries of 12 riders…
Update: Summaries of New VA Contracts Filed With the SEC in 2019
This table updates our coverage of new variable annuity contracts filed with the SEC in 2019 and contains summaries of 11 new products…
