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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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Impressions on Consumer-Friendly Issues for the Variable Annuity Business

In our last report we discussed how insurers are building fee reductions into their variable annuities, which we think is good for the industry in that it may help counter some negative perceptions. This week,...

VA Benefit Modifications and How They Might Play in Distribution Channels

Variable annuity benefit tweaking and modifying has been happening a bit less frequent lately, and we attribute this to the summer slowdown. Filing activity ought to be picking back up as we get into the...

New Pension Reform Act Should Help Annuity Business on Several Fronts

In our opinion, the new Pension Protection Act of 2006 does much to encourage Americans to save for retirement and contains provisions to make annuities more attractive both within Defined Contribution (DC) plans and in...

Publicly-Traded VA Insurers Fare Better in Q2 – as Reported in Earnings Calls

We always look forward to reviewing major public insurers’ quarterly calls during earnings season, as these companies in many ways act as barometers for the health of the variable annuity business as a whole. In...

VUL Breeding: Hybrid Policies Mix Protection, Equity Exposure and Liquidity

Variable Universal Life (VUL) policies certainly have a lot going for them in terms of optionality and flexibility, with the insured being able to adjust the death benefit, the timing and level of premium payments,...

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...