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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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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...

Concerning Directions in the Annuity Business in Late 2013

It's our opinion that the annuity business in the U.S. is showing signs of becoming more balanced in terms of its product offerings and sales practices. Some of this process of change is happening partly...

Earnings Held Up for Insurers in Q3 – But VA Sales? Not So Much

It seems to us that most variable annuity insurers fared well this third quarter from an earnings standpoint, helped by a rise in the stock market. However VA sales were down for the group of...

More FIAs Are Offering Vol Management – to Capitalize on Consumer Interest

Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, we have seen a variety of volatility management strategies developed around the industry, from creative hedging strategies devised by variable annuity insurers to hedge their benefit risks, to...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from July, 2013

In July there was a pickup in filing activity related to variable insurance portfolios, with a number of interesting registrations, including two brand-new fund trusts. A good number of the new registrations are scheduled to...

Update on Hartford’s Initiative: Some of Our Suspicions Have Been Confirmed

In our last few commentaries we’ve shared our suspicion that, based on language in some recent SEC filings, four state insurance departments might not allow some or all of Hartford’s planned sub-account restrictions on certain...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from April-May, 2013

In this commentary we’ll get caught up with variable insurance fund filings from the months of April and May, a time period that was fairly active, however we didn’t see a large number of new...

Lincoln National Communicates Confidence in Its Annuity Business

Investors and analysts are very curious as to how variable annuity operations may affect the health and profitability of insurers, especially since companies are now pulling away from selling rich guarantees. As we noted in...

VA Insurers Say They Are Managing Benefit Risks – But Still Want to Trim Them

It’s been a while since we checked in on variable annuity guaranteed benefit risk levels, and we were reminded of that fact by MetLife’s recent investor day, where the topic was discussed at length. We...