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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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Assorted Happenings – Regarding Variable Products, Benefits, Funds

In this commentary we’ll cover some interesting variable product filings from recent weeks that we think are indicative of where insurers are headed with their designs. We’ll also share some brief thoughts about trends in...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from November and December, 2013

With this report we will get caught up with noteworthy variable insurance filings from the last two months of 2013. There were quite a few interesting developments during that time, particularly related to volatility-control funds…

Summer Moves on the VA Scene – a Mix of Innovation and De-Risking

This summer has been slow in terms of variable annuity product filings – as usually is the case for the time of year – however we have seen enough interesting things come through to give...

VA Insurers Say They Are Managing Benefit Risks – But Still Want to Trim Them

It’s been a while since we checked in on variable annuity guaranteed benefit risk levels, and we were reminded of that fact by MetLife’s recent investor day, where the topic was discussed at length. We...

Spring Arrivals – of New Variable Annuity Product Concepts and Revisions

Each year we look forward to the May prospectus update season – despite the onslaught of filings – because interesting storylines always seem to emerge during that time. In this commentary we’ll discuss a few...

VA Insurers Are Developing New Limits on Contracts, Riders, Underlying Funds

This year most variable annuity insurers have been cutting back on the generosity of their guarantees, however we think any companies seeking to remain competitive are sort of walking a fine line – they want...

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,...

Newer Annuity Types That Are Emerging During this Period of De-Risking

For the most part, variable annuity insurers are moving away from selling risky benefits, but we think that the process of de-risking will take time, because industry sales are still largely driven by the richest...

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...