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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.

No Summer Vacation for Product Development in the Variable Business

During the summer the rate of new features, tweaks and modifications to variable annuities tends to slow down, but the past couple of months have contained enough meaningful filings to keep us quite occupied, and...

New VA Contract Filings Reflect Emphasis on Lower Pricing, More Options

We’ve made it one of our regular tasks to monitor new variable annuity contract designs being introduced, so with this report we’ll share with you our latest findings on this subject, to take stock of...

The Growing Number of Lifetime GMWBs – in Interesting and Complex Varieties

It’s about time we checked back in on variable annuity lifetime Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefits (GMWBs) and our goal for this report will be to offer highlights of the latest filings and attempt to identify...

An Ongoing Task: Evaluating VA Net Flows and Their Utility for the Industry

Since the topic has been on the minds of our contacts and colleagues, in this report we’re going explore the topic of variable annuity net flows, a measurement somewhat controversial when introduced to the industry...

VA Contract Notebook: Tendencies Within New Designs Filed This Year

With this report we’re going to take a little time to consider what’s currently popular in variable annuity contract designs, based on our understanding of sales trends and our evaluations of new products filed this...

From Flat to Just Slightly Up: VA Insurers See Moderate Sales in Q1

For the publicly-traded variable annuity insurers we track on a quarterly basis, 2007 seemed to start off on a slow note, at least on a sequential basis: a few companies saw modest increases in sales...

Following Up on Recent Revisions to VA Guaranteed Living Benefits

As the May prospectus update season is now in full swing, we anticipate that a fresh stream of new variable annuity living benefit concepts will be coming out due to competitive pressure. It’s always challenging...

The Latest News on Variable Annuities in Defined Contribution Plans

In this commentary we’re going to quickly give our perspective on news and developments related to variable annuities and defined contribution (DC) plans, especially 401(k)s, since many insurers perceive these programs to be a possible...

More of a Bargain: Movements in VA Contract Design and Structure

If there’s any one trend in variable annuity design we see building momentum, it’s that of insurers offering contracts with lower-than-average costs, usually combined with a relatively modest number of sub-accounts and optional benefits. Since...