Research & Reports
A Contract Update – and Other Notes from the May Prospectus Season
At this time of year there’s a deluge of variable annuity prospectus updates being submitted to the SEC, and, as usual, we’ve been sifting through those documents in an effort to find newsworthy things to...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from March, 2011
During March we noticed but a moderate stream of variable insurance fund filings with the SEC, typical for the time of year, as much activity involved platform tweaks and modifications of one form or another....
More Thoughts on Variable Annuity Contract Trends, Other Issues
In this commentary we are continuing our discussion of variable annuity product trends from last week, to take note of actions being taken by insurers to meet varying sources of demand. In addition, we have...
Evaluating Some Recent Developments in VA Share Classes, Riders
In starting to write this commentary it was our intention to focus on trends in variable annuity contracts, however, after digging into recent regulatory filings, we unearthed noteworthy things occurring with benefit riders that we...
Met’s Move – to Offer a New Edition of its Guaranteed Income Benefit
Enough new product initiatives have been happening around the variable annuity industry to make us curious as to how such ideas may translate into sales over the rest of the year. Last week we saw...
Varied Changes – Coming Soon to Variable Annuity Contracts, Benefits
We continue to see interesting adjustments and enhancements being introduced to variable annuity products, which we think shows that there are still stiff winds of competition around the industry, however muted from the arms race...
Results for 2010 are In, Reflecting a Rebound – But Is It Sustainable?
Final variable annuity sales figures for last year were released not long ago, and, much as we expected, the industry showed improvement. The question foremost in our minds is whether the upward trend can continue...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from January-February, 2011
With this report we are getting caught up with variable insurance fund developments from the first two months of this year, and during that time we saw the continuation of an emerging trend: that of...
Rising Markets, Benefit Riders Helped Spur VA Sales During 4Q10
After reviewing fourth quarter variable annuity sales results of stock-traded insurers in our regular coverage group, we strongly suspect that the industry fared well during that time period as well. What remains to be seen...
