Research & Reports

In this report we’ll share what we thought were key takeaways from the Insured Retirement Institute’s 2012 Marketing Summit held last week in New York City, and try to put those thoughts in perspective with...

Hartford’s decision to discontinue sales of individual annuities has triggered a number of related events in recent days, and we get the feeling that more interesting developments are yet to come. Moreover we believe that...

After reviewing variable annuity sales of selected publicly-traded insurers from the fourth quarter of 2011, we’re of the opinion that, for that time period, industry-wide deposits declined a bit sequentially. However for the full year,...

As we have done in the past, we reserved our last weekly commentary of this year for a reflection on how the variable annuity business performed in 2011. It is our way of getting a...

We think these are rather uncertain times for the variable annuity space: companies are cutting back in one form or another – actually many pending product changes have yet to be fully revealed – and,...

Earnings season for stock-traded insurers we monitor regularly has concluded, and, for the most part, variable annuity sales for those companies fell, due to a combination of factors that have become familiar to anyone following...

We fully expect more product de-risking, and other changes and adjustments, to occur on the variable annuity scene over the last quarter of the year. However we also think the value proposition of the industry...

The second quarter is traditionally one of the best for variable annuity sales, and we are hearing estimates from our contacts that the industry performed well this time around. However we’re also getting the distinct...

Variable annuity sales for stock-traded insurers we cover regularly were split down the middle in the first quarter of this year, one half reporting some measure of improvement sequentially while the rest did not fare...