Research & Reports
Update: Variable Insurance Volatility-Managed Portfolios
This updated spreadsheet of variable insurance volatility-managed portfolios contains data through the first quarter of 2016. By our count there were 217 such portfolios in operation at quarter end, containing more than $245 billion in...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from April-May, 2016
In this report we’ll get caught up with noteworthy variable fund filings from the months of April and May. We didn’t see too many new fund registrations during the two months; most filings involved adjustments...
New Coverage: Notable VA Product Changes in 2016
This spreadsheet is our initial coverage of notable variable annuity product changes so far this year; we will provide periodic updates to this sheet in the future…
Concerning Changes – That are Being Made to VA Products This Year
In this report we’ll touch on the kind of tweaks and adjustments insurers have been making to their variable annuity products lately. Most of the changes follow patterns we have seen around the industry the...
Concerning Q1 Variable Annuity Sales – and Recent Product Moves
Variable annuity industry sales in the first quarter finished how we expected they would – down considerably on both a sequential and year-over-year basis. In this report we’ll take a quick look at the numbers...
We Suspect VA Industry Sales Were Probably Down Again in 1Q16
We just finished conducting our review of first quarter results of publicly-traded insurers we monitor regularly, and for all of them, variable annuity sales fell, thus we suspect the industry experienced a similar result…
More Thoughts on Recent Variable Annuity Prospectus Updates, Changes
In our view, variable annuity product filing activity is still rather slow compared to prior years, so for that reason we’ll devote this report to touching on just a few developments, some which we have...
American General Launches GLWB with Highest Daily Ratcheting
Lately we haven’t seen too many variable annuity insurers make their living benefits more generous, but American General introduced a new lifetime withdrawal benefit yesterday which is now one of the few in the industry...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from March, 2016
During March the pace of variable fund filing activity was pretty lively in our view, and among interesting developments was the introduction of a new sub-advised trust from insurer Guardian Life…