Research & Reports
Update on Hartford’s Initiative: Some of Our Suspicions Have Been Confirmed
In our last few commentaries we’ve shared our suspicion that, based on language in some recent SEC filings, four state insurance departments might not allow some or all of Hartford’s planned sub-account restrictions on certain...
More Summer Product Initiatives Are Arising on the Variable Annuity Scene
In this commentary we will return to a few storylines from around the variable annuity business that we have been tracking of late, and weigh in on new ones that we have seen emerge…
An Update on Variable Annuity Contract and GLWB Filings in 2013
We have been sifting through recent filings of variable annuity contracts and lifetime withdrawal benefits and, while we haven’t been seeing quite as much activity in the pipeline as in past years, we did catch...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from April-May, 2013
In this commentary we’ll get caught up with variable insurance fund filings from the months of April and May, a time period that was fairly active, however we didn’t see a large number of new...
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...
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...
