Research & Reports
A Shift in the Living Benefit Arms Race – VA Insurers Start to Scale Back
In the past six years the variable annuity industry has been marked by fierce competition between insurers over who has the richest guaranteed living benefits, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the...
Q3 Commentary Part II – Risks, Returns are Main Themes in VA Insurers’ Reports
In wrapping up our third quarter reporting on selected variable annuity insurers, we’ll say that it seems clear that for now, investors are still reluctant to purchase VAs during troubling market conditions such as the...
Our Q3 Commentary Part I – Variable Annuity Insurers Face a Difficult Time
This is the first installment of our third quarter commentary on variable annuity results for selected insurers we monitor regularly, and next week we’ll follow up on others that have not yet reported. Thus far,...
Musing on the State of Variable Annuities During the Current Market Turmoil
Recently we’ve been contemplating the “value proposition” of the variable annuity, how the product might be positioned and sold given the existing market climate. Earnings season is now underway and we think results from last...
Making Sense of All the Movement – VA Contracts, Riders Set for Q4 Debuts
This week we’ll comment on an assortment of recent product moves within the variable annuity space, and we must say that we aren’t seeing a major slowdown in the rate of activity, as there are...
Competition, Downturns, Volatility – What’s Been on People’s Minds in Q3
The third quarter is coming to a close and it was a rough one for the financial markets, to say the least. Throughout that time we’ve had informal discussions with our industry contacts as to...
Variable Annuity Contract Notes: Checking Back in on the Newest Registrations
Over the past several weeks we’ve taken some time to pore over new variable annuity contract registrations, including those we started monitoring last year, and in this commentary we’ll discuss what we learned from that...
An Update – Directions in Variable Annuity Guaranteed Living Benefit Assets
Recently we devoted some more time to sifting through insurers’ financial documents to gather data on variable annuity guaranteed living benefit account values, because we believe the data provide clues as to product priorities around...
Atypical Designs in Variable Annuity GLWBs Sold in the State of New York
Anyone who’s been around the industry for awhile knows that the state of New York does things differently than most other jurisdictions, usually placing very firm restrictions on policies and features before they are approved....