Research & Reports
GLWB Movements – Answering the Competition, Preparing for Next Year
It’s our feeling that newer variable annuity lifetime withdrawal benefits getting filed of late – plus various modifications to existing ones – are being introduced this quarter to “prime the pump” for next year. Barring...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from September, 2010
It’s time again for us to conduct our monthly review of variable insurance fund filings. We thought the industry was pretty active during September, with insurers making quite a few modifications to their investment platforms…
Q4 Launches – Products Insurers Hope Will Attract Sales into the New Year
It’s our feeling that these days, most variable annuity insurers are in a “reactive mode” in that few are making truly bold moves with their products; rather they are content to make modifications and enhancements...
Competitive Direction: Tactics VA Market Leaders May Employ, Near Term
It will take a little while before variable annuity industry sales results from the third quarter come out, and at this point we are unsure what those numbers may reveal, since we are not expecting...
Back to School – Viewpoints on VA Industry Issues as Q3 Winds Down
The weather has gotten cooler, football season has commenced, and families are back from vacation, all these things serving to remind us that we are coming to the end of the third quarter. In this...
GLWB Fiddling – Recent Creativity in Rider Designs and Functions
In the variable annuity marketplace there remains a minority of insurers who are tweaking and modifying their guaranteed living benefits regularly, to match up better against the competition. We would say we’re in a period...
Contract Trends – Fresh Ideas, Approaches in New Registrations
We continue to see new variable annuity contracts in the pipeline that have what we call non-traditional chassis and pricing, and we think insurance companies are developing such products to anticipate future needs – not...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from July, 2010
This report contains our usual highlights of variable insurance portfolio filings from the prior month, but we’ll also spend a little time considering investment platform trends around the industry, which have a strong connection to...
Risk Sensitivity – As it Relates to VA Insurers’ Guaranteed Benefits
In our regular duties we are mostly occupied with following manufacturing trends in the variable annuity business, endeavoring to sort out what is meaningful from what is not. However we also are very interested in...