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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 Contract Considerations – And Assorted Notes on Other Matters

We’ve been providing frequent commentary lately about guaranteed living benefits – which we think is warranted since they are so integral to the variable annuity sales story these days – however this week we’ll focus...

Ratcheting Rates – Insurers Develop GLWBs with Adjustable Withdrawals

The stream of variable annuity-related filings moving through the SEC has been speeding up of late, and a common theme we keep noticing is that insurers are building in new forms of flexibility to their...

Variable Annuity Sales from 4Q09 Reveal Uneven Patterns in the Industry

After reviewing fourth quarter variable annuity results of stock-traded companies we regularly monitor, we found a familiar mixed result – a few insurers did well while most others saw deposits decline – reflecting how the...

Insurers Are Filing New VA Benefits Well Before the May Update Season

It’s common practice for variable annuity insurers to use the prospectus update season to bring out new products or enhance existing ones. Usually we don’t see major changes start cropping up until a month or...

“Five at 65” – Enhancements of Variable Annuity Riders Are Picking Up Again

Innovation permeates the very core of the variable annuity business; in fact we’ve come to expect near-constant creativity from actuaries and product development specialists. The rate of movement may have slowed compared with years past,...

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...