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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.

Results Are Coming In – and VA Sales Appear to Have Cooled Off

As we write this, stock-traded insurers are in the middle of earnings season, and 4Q11 variable annuity sales data are being released. So far, most companies we monitor regularly have been reporting sequential declines in...

Coming Into Focus – Pending VA Product Changes Are Being Finalized

Last year some variable annuity insurers filed what appeared to be de-risking tweaks to their products, but with key details left undisclosed, and some of these planned changes have stayed in the pipeline for quite...

“The Daily Show” – Hartford Enhances Ratchets on New Benefits

The recent filing by Hartford Life of two new variable annuity benefits that feature highest daily account value growth has the industry buzzing, and we think for good reason. Observers of the market will be...

VA Insurers Tread Carefully in Adjusting Products, Launching New Ideas

As the New Year has gotten underway, we can’t say we’ve seen any real earth-shattering variable annuity products as of yet. Indeed, some tweaks and revisions filed with the SEC last year have not rolled...

“Stretching Exercises” – That Might Pull VA Products in New Directions

It’s our sense that, unless there is a dramatic (and sustained) rebound in the financial markets near term, most variable annuity insurers will be in de-risking mode. For that reason we expect more of the...

A Busy Beginning – for Product Moves Around the VA Business

Through the latter months of last year, we saw a number of variable annuity product changes in the pipeline whose details were not fully fleshed out. Because of this we got the feeling that most...

A Season of Change – In Which VA Insurers Are Moving Tentatively

Many variable annuity issuers have been filing changes to their products – mostly of the de-risking variety – but they have not taken what we would call drastic measures. We think this is because most...

A Quick Look Back – on 2011 and its Significance for the VA Industry

As we have done in the past, we reserved our last weekly commentary of this year for a reflection on how the variable annuity business performed in 2011. It is our way of getting a...

Winding Down – There May Be More Surprises Before the Year Ends

As we write this, product filing activity around the variable annuity business has slowed down a bit, but there remain numerous modifications in the pipeline, quite a few of them not scheduled to come out...