Research & Reports
Tendencies in New VAs and Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits Filed this Year
This report will discuss variable annuity product trends and serve as a companion piece to the new Featured Research we published today covering new VA contracts and lifetime withdrawal benefits registered with the SEC so...
Musings on the VA Industry as Q1 Ends – and on Recent Product Filings
The first quarter will conclude tomorrow and it’s our view that variable annuity business sales probably did not pick up very much, if at all, during that time period…
A Brief Update on Variable Product Managed-Volatility Portfolios
In this report we’ll get caught up with trends in variable managed-volatility portfolios, which over the past few years have been gathering assets at a fairly rapid pace. We’ll also share a few corrections and...
Update: Variable Insurance Volatility-Managed Portfolios
This updated spreadsheet of variable insurance volatility-managed portfolios contains data through the fourth quarter of 2014, and incorporates some adjustments to the data set. By our count there were 193 such portfolios in operation, containing...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from February, 2015
This February we saw a fairly large number of new variable insurance funds get registered with the SEC, which is typical for the time of year, as insurers prepare to update their products in May....
Brief Thoughts on 2014 Annuity Sales – and the Future of the Business
We reviewed fourth quarter and full-year 2014 annuity industry sales and they came out pretty much as we expected they would – variable annuity production was down but fixed annuities, led by those of the...
An Update on Recent Variable Annuity Product and Rider Filings
In this report we’ll get caught up with variable annuity contracts and benefits that were filed over the past month; the batch included a mix of benefit revisions and wholly new ones, many of which...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from January, 2015
In January we saw a substantial number of new variable fund registrations filed with the SEC, and it looks like most of them will debut during the May prospectus update season. In this report we...
VA Industry Sales Growth in Q4 Looks Doubtful to Us, All Things Considered
As is our practice each quarter, we reviewed earnings results for selected stock-traded insurers we track regularly, and came to the conclusion that for most of them, variable annuity operations performed more or less in...