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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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MetLife Becomes Latest Insurer to File an Investment-Only VA

For a while now we had a suspicion MetLife would come out with an investment-only variable annuity, since so many of its peers have done so. As it turns out the insurer filed one not...

MetLife Files a New Simplified Variable Annuity – With a GMAB

In recent reports we’ve opined about how slow activity along the variable annuity product pipeline has become this summer. Yet last Friday MetLife cut through the seasonal doldrums by registering an interesting new contract with...

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...

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...

An IOVA Update – Looking at Current Products, Ones Coming to Market

Lately we’ve fielded an increased number of questions about investment-only variable annuities (IOVAs) so in this commentary we will weigh in further about them. We expect more IOVAs to be filed over the near term...

Jackson to Suspend Death Benefit Sales, Pru Proceeds with IOVA

It’s been sort of slow going in the variable annuity product pipeline of late, however last week we saw a few interesting developments come through from Jackson National and Prudential: the former will be trimming...

It Looks Like for Most Insurers, VA Sales Were Down Again in 4Q13

We reviewed fourth quarter earnings results for selected publicly-traded insurers we track regularly and came to the conclusion that variable annuity industry deposits dropped for the quarter and the year as a whole. We think...

Insurers Are Developing More Variations on the Investment-Only VA

As the year began, we were confident more investment-only variable annuities were on the drawing board and we were curious as to how insurers might tinker with the concept. It just so happens that some...

In 2013, VA Sales Eased While Other Annuity Products Gathered Steam

Throughout most of 2013, variable annuity sales took a downward trajectory, due mostly to the de-risking undertaken by insurers, mirroring moves they had executed the year before. While net flows into VAs slowed, fixed and...