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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.

GLWB Movements – Answering the Competition, Preparing for Next Year

It’s our feeling that newer variable annuity lifetime withdrawal benefits getting filed of late – plus various modifications to existing ones – are being introduced this quarter to “prime the pump” for next year. Barring...

GLWB Fiddling – Recent Creativity in Rider Designs and Functions

In the variable annuity marketplace there remains a minority of insurers who are tweaking and modifying their guaranteed living benefits regularly, to match up better against the competition. We would say we’re in a period...

Risk Sensitivity – As it Relates to VA Insurers’ Guaranteed Benefits

In our regular duties we are mostly occupied with following manufacturing trends in the variable annuity business, endeavoring to sort out what is meaningful from what is not. However we also are very interested in...

Rising Tide – Variable Annuity Insurers See Deposits Lift in Q2

We were somewhat surprised to find that variable annuity deposits for most of the stock-traded life insurance companies we monitor regularly were quite strong in the second quarter. Therefore we now suspect the industry as...

Variable Annuity Sales from 4Q09 Reveal Uneven Patterns in the Industry

After reviewing fourth quarter variable annuity results of stock-traded companies we regularly monitor, we found a familiar mixed result – a few insurers did well while most others saw deposits decline – reflecting how the...

“Stealing the Show” – A Select Few VA Players Excel During 3Q09

During the third quarter we saw a familiar pattern that’s emerged lately in the variable annuity business, that of a minority of insurers – those still selling the richer guaranteed benefits – posting exceptional sales,...

Upward Market Movement Provided Relief to Insurers’ VA Risk Levels

The recovery in the financial markets that took place in the second quarter not only helped variable annuity sales bounce back for most insurers, another positive development was a reduction in the levels of risk...

2Q09 Brought a Degree of Recovery for the Markets – and the VA Business

It’s once again time for us to offer our quarterly commentary on variable annuity sales for the stock-traded insurers we regularly monitor, and to discuss relevant themes facing the industry. We’ll start off by saying...

Spanning the Seasons – VA Product Launches Scheduled for Summer and Fall

As we commence the third quarter – usually a pretty slow period for variable industry sales – the pace of de-risking seems to be settling down a bit, but the process is not over by...