Research & Reports
Principal Financial Files a New VA Contract – With an Optional DIA Module
Late last week Principal Financial registered a new variable annuity containing a deferred income annuity (DIA) sleeve, and because of that development we thought we’d take the opportunity to consider the progress of such features...
New Coverage: Notable VA Product Changes in 2014
This spreadsheet is our initial coverage of notable variable annuity product changes so far this year; we will provide periodic updates to this sheet in the future…
Identifying Trends in Variable Annuity Industry Product Changes in 2014
Since the start of the year we have been steadily tracking modifications to variable annuity products and in this commentary we’ll share what we think are prevailing trends from around the industry…
Jackson is Revamping its GLWBs – Adding Tiered Withdrawal Rates, Fees
Jackson National is an insurer that tends to make interesting – if not downright intriguing – product moves and late last week we saw another example of this in a filing that contained alterations to...
Update: Variable Insurance Volatility-Managed Portfolios
We have just posted an updated spreadsheet of variable insurance volatility-managed portfolios, with data through the first quarter of 2014. By our count there were 173 such portfolios in operation, containing $154.3 billion in assets…
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from May, 2014
This report contains our coverage of notable variable insurance fund filings from the month of May, and to summarize that time period, most activity involved changes to existing offerings. We didn’t see any new registrations...
Another Structured Annuity is On The Way – This Time from ING
To date, only a few insurers have come out with structured annuities, which contain a basket of index-linked options with buffers to protect investors against a set percentage of losses. That’s why we were somewhat...
Signs from Earnings Calls Point to Lower VA Industry Deposits in 1Q14
In the first quarter of this year variable annuity sales fell, on a sequential basis, for every member of our group of publicly-traded insurers we watch regularly, which makes us pretty sure that the industry...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from April, 2014
In this commentary we’ll cover notable variable insurance fund filings from the month of April, which was a somewhat slow period in our opinion…