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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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Shifting and Tweaking Going on Within VA Withdrawal Benefits for Life

It’s about time we issued one of our periodic updates on what’s happening in variable annuity lifetime withdrawal benefits, because they are so important to sales and the filing activity around them still vigorous. The...

VA Sales and the Opposing Themes of Staying Competitive – or Cost-Conscious

We recently took time to reflect on divergent trends within the pricing and structure of variable annuities, a topic that should become more “front-and-center” in the future and cut across distribution outlets, since products and...

Catching Up on Recent Variable Annuity Benefit Changes and Developments

We’ve identified a few brand-new variable annuity benefit guarantees filed over the past couple of months, but more frequently we’ve been seeing modifications of existing riders, such as clarifications to special provisions, pricing adjustments and...

“Making Qualifications” – Latest Objections to Annuities in Qualified Plans

The sale of annuities in qualified plans has been a controversial subject over the years and the target of a number of law suits alleging that the practice is inappropriate. Lately there have been some...

Considering Variable Product Commission and Revenue Sharing Programs

We’ve long been noting how variable annuity insurers are faced with multiple opposing pressures. On the one hand, critics of the business clamor for annuities that are easier to understand and less expensive than the...

Getting Further Perspective on VA Spousal Withdrawal Benefits for Life

In our last report we discussed a number of spousal withdrawal benefits for life and figured we wouldn’t revisit the subject again for awhile but, since Hartford came out with its first such GMWBs relatively...

Q1 Earnings Calls Continued: Evidence of Further Need for Innovation

With this commentary we’ll resume our coverage of first quarter earnings calls and show how some insurers, due to their scale and ability to offer cutting-edge ideas, have seen resurgence in their variable annuity sales,...

Q1 Earnings Calls of Public Insurers Illustrate Need for Continued Sales Growth

Last week we listened to first quarter earnings conference calls of five publicly-traded insurers who do business in the U.S. variable space, and for some of these companies, annuity sales improved, although surrenders – more...

Product Innovation is Growing on the Qualified Side of the Variable Business

As The Soleares Report evolves, we’ll have plenty to report regarding variable insurance products and features because new things are constantly coming out. This continuous introduction of ideas is important to the health of the...