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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 Insurers Say They Are Managing Benefit Risks – But Still Want to Trim Them

It’s been a while since we checked in on variable annuity guaranteed benefit risk levels, and we were reminded of that fact by MetLife’s recent investor day, where the topic was discussed at length. We...

VA Insurers Continue to Revise Existing Benefits to Trim Risks – and Sales

Over the past year or so we have seen an increasing number of insurers file variable annuity guaranteed benefits that are not entirely new, but rather slightly de-risked versions of existing ones. Last week we...

VA Sales Appear to Have Continued Their Downward Movement in 1Q13

We have just completed our review of variable annuity results for publicly-traded insurers we watch regularly and, based on the performance of those companies, we suspect the industry saw a drop in deposits in the...

Some Notes on VA Contracts and Riders – That Are Coming and Going

We are still working our way through the May variable annuity prospectus updates, and recently we have found an interesting mixture of activity on the part of issuers, ranging from the scaling back or closing...

A Variety of Tweaks to Contracts, Riders are Coming Through in May Updates

Over the past few weeks we have been occupied with sifting through annual variable annuity prospectus updates, and within some filings we saw adjustments to in-force contracts and benefits that we think provide evidence that...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from March, 2013

This March we didn’t see a great deal of variable insurance fund filings with the SEC. Most of the activity revolved around manager changes and the trimming down of fund platforms through mergers and liquidations…

Some Speculation on Q1 Performance of the VA Business – and Other Matters

Now that the first quarter has ended and we are well into the next one, we’ll share some thoughts on how we think the variable industry may have done so far this year. We think...

Spring Arrivals – of New Variable Annuity Product Concepts and Revisions

Each year we look forward to the May prospectus update season – despite the onslaught of filings – because interesting storylines always seem to emerge during that time. In this commentary we’ll discuss a few...

Insurers are Reshaping Annuities to Offer Unique Income-Focused Guarantees

The annuity industry is now in a period where it is seeking to develop new product types, using the lessons learned during the heady days of the variable annuity arms race. It is abundantly clear...