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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.

VA Sales and the Opposing Themes of Staying Competitive – or Cost-Conscious

We recently took time to reflect on divergent trends within the pricing and structure of variable annuities, a topic that should become more “front-and-center” in the future and cut across distribution outlets, since products and...

Catching Up on Recent Variable Annuity Benefit Changes and Developments

We’ve identified a few brand-new variable annuity benefit guarantees filed over the past couple of months, but more frequently we’ve been seeing modifications of existing riders, such as clarifications to special provisions, pricing adjustments and...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from June, 2006

We identified 14 new variable insurance funds filed in the month of June, a fairly good number. In addition, activity was fairly energetic around sub-advisory and name changes, mergers, closings and other modifications, covering a...

“Getting Into Modeling” – The Latest in Variable Asset Allocation Programs

Insurers have long offered various types of asset allocation and rebalancing services to their variable contract holders, to help them diversify and manage the risk associated with their sub-accounts. In fact, the performance of models...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from May, 2006

In the month of May we found just two new variable insurance portfolios filed, although we saw quite a few name changes, adjustments and new share classes which we’ll mention in our monthly look at...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from April, 2006

We identified just three new variable insurance funds registered with the SEC in the month of April, the reduced activity probably because most new investment options had already been filed earlier, well in advance of...

Q1 Earnings Calls Continued: Evidence of Further Need for Innovation

With this commentary we’ll resume our coverage of first quarter earnings calls and show how some insurers, due to their scale and ability to offer cutting-edge ideas, have seen resurgence in their variable annuity sales,...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from March, 2006

Over the first few months of the year we’ve been noticing rather specialized variable insurance funds coming out, some “non-correlative” with the market – in that they may take an inverse position against an index...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from February, 2006

In the new variable funds filed in February we noticed some general trends continuing, among them the offering of new types of funds-of-funds (F-of-Fs), which to us is not surprising given their frequent use in...