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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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A Bit of a Disconnect? A Near-Term Outlook on VA Industry Results

When fourth quarter variable annuity sales results come out, we’re convinced they will reflect a lack of participation by the industry in the improving equity markets – much as was the case in the prior...

Sorting Through Notable Variable Annuity Product Developments

We continue to see an interesting mix of variable annuity contracts and features coming out, some following the trend towards the simpler and cheaper, others more fully loaded. Regardless of this diversity, we firmly believe...

NFL Game Planning: A Fitting Analogy for the Industry at the Start of 2010?

In the past, we have employed comparisons with the sporting world to describe competitive conditions in the variable annuity space, and we’re going to do so again in this, our first commentary of the New...

Reflecting on the VA Industry in 2009: A Time of Shifting Realities

It’s become our custom to dedicate our last commentary each year to looking back at how the variable annuity business performed, to get the evaluation process started before fourth quarter data are released. Thus in...

Talking Product – Reflecting On Changes, Innovation in the VA Business

There remains a near-constant flow of changes and adjustments being made to products in the variable annuity space, due to a mix of competitive and risk-based concerns, and we don’t see any let-up to this...

“One From Column A” – Optionality Within VA Benefit Allocation Programs

To date, pretty much all variable annuity insurers impose investment restrictions on clients who purchase guaranteed living benefits, the balancing act is to do this while still affording some measure of choice, and in this...

VA Rider Design Trends – GLWBs That Stay Rich, But Address Risk Issues

In this commentary we will be discussing some of the newer variable annuity Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits (GLWBs) that insurers have been filing, many of these riders offering robust base growth rates, yet also incorporating...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from October, 2009

During the month of October there was the usual moderate stream of variable insurance fund filings, and within them one could see evidence of key priorities for the industry, one of the most obvious being...

“Stealing the Show” – A Select Few VA Players Excel During 3Q09

During the third quarter we saw a familiar pattern that’s emerged lately in the variable annuity business, that of a minority of insurers – those still selling the richer guaranteed benefits – posting exceptional sales,...