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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.

VA Sales in 2014 Were Slow Again, Reflecting a Retooling Environment

Each year we devote the last commentary of December to taking a quick look back at the past year in the variable annuity business, and we’ll do so again this time, and also make some...

Update: Variable Insurance Volatility-Managed Portfolios

This updated spreadsheet of variable insurance volatility-managed portfolios contains data through the third quarter of 2014, and incorporates some adjustments to the data set. By our count there were 190 such portfolios in operation, containing...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from November, 2014

This report will cover noteworthy variable insurance fund filings from November – which was a fairly active month – and also briefly discuss trends in variable managed-volatility funds…

Sizing Up the Playing Field – More Thoughts on 3Q14 Industry Sales

In this commentary we’ll provide more of our observations on annuity sales in the third quarter, and consider the competitive landscape as we enter the holiday season…

An Update on VA Industry Filing Activity at the Start of December

Activity along the variable annuity product pipeline has been somewhat slow of late, reflecting the fact that most insurers are retooling their offerings – and yet recently we’ve noticed a company, MetLife, file new guaranteed...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from October, 2014

As usual there weren’t a large number of variable insurance fund filings during this October, as most new registrations are submitted to the SEC earlier in the year. Still, there were a few interesting developments...

AEGON and Assumptions – Further Thoughts on Q3 Numbers

In this commentary we’ll offer up some comments on third-quarter results of Dutch insurer AEGON, because it has a substantial variable annuity business in the U.S. and its experience in the quarter mirrored that of...

The Q3 Market Uptick Boosted VA Assets – as For Sales? We’re Not Sure

Third quarter earnings season for the publicly-traded insurers we watch regularly concluded last week, and for most of those companies, variable annuity business operations retained profitability, largely because the stock market’s rise caused assets under...

Various Benefit Updates, Changes From Around the VA Business

In recent weeks the variable annuity product pipeline hasn’t exactly been buzzing with activity, but we have seen a few tweaks and rider updates – most, but not all, involving de-risking – and we’ll discuss...