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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.
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VA Insurers Attempt to Design Attractive – But Manageable – Guarantees

A dilemma for insurers working in the variable annuity space these days is how to offer guarantees without taking on undue amounts of risk. To our minds this consideration is a priority for the industry,...

As Summer Winds Down, More VA De-Risking Moves are Occurring

Lately we’ve been seeing fresh product reductions taking place around the variable annuity business, and we think that the effectiveness of such moves will depend largely on how each insurer will look, competitively, after making...

Robust Rollups – Are Still Being Offered on Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits

Judging by some Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits (GLWBs) being introduced to the variable annuity space lately, we’d have to say that a few insurers are bucking the general trend towards product de-risking. Instead of pulling...

“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...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from May, 2011

We thought the month of May was rather active in terms of SEC filings related to variable insurance underlying funds. There was an interesting mix of movement: sub-account platforms were streamlined, new management fee arrangements...

Met’s Move – to Offer a New Edition of its Guaranteed Income Benefit

Enough new product initiatives have been happening around the variable annuity industry to make us curious as to how such ideas may translate into sales over the rest of the year. Last week we saw...

Varied Changes – Coming Soon to Variable Annuity Contracts, Benefits

We continue to see interesting adjustments and enhancements being introduced to variable annuity products, which we think shows that there are still stiff winds of competition around the industry, however muted from the arms race...

Rising Markets, Benefit Riders Helped Spur VA Sales During 4Q10

After reviewing fourth quarter variable annuity sales results of stock-traded insurers in our regular coverage group, we strongly suspect that the industry fared well during that time period as well. What remains to be seen...

2010 – For the Variable Annuity Industry, a Time of Renewed Risk Taking

It’s become our custom with the last report of December to offer reflections on how the variable annuity business performed over the past year, and suggest issues to watch in the future. We admit that...