Research & Reports
A Busy Beginning – for Product Moves Around the VA Business
Through the latter months of last year, we saw a number of variable annuity product changes in the pipeline whose details were not fully fleshed out. Because of this we got the feeling that most...
A Season of Change – In Which VA Insurers Are Moving Tentatively
Many variable annuity issuers have been filing changes to their products – mostly of the de-risking variety – but they have not taken what we would call drastic measures. We think this is because most...
A Quick Look Back – on 2011 and its Significance for the VA Industry
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...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from November, 2011
In this report we’ll provide our usual highlights of recent variable fund filings, and comment on the announcement today from Sun Life Financial that it will discontinue sales of variable annuities in the U.S. To...
Winding Down – There May Be More Surprises Before the Year Ends
As we write this, product filing activity around the variable annuity business has slowed down a bit, but there remain numerous modifications in the pipeline, quite a few of them not scheduled to come out...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from October, 2011
The month of October was an active one in terms of variable insurance fund filings with the SEC, and we strongly suspect that a number of the changes were connected with product initiatives insurers have...
Update: Selected Guaranteed Minimum Income Benefits
This grid updates our coverage of selected Guaranteed Minimum Income Benefits (GMIBs), including references to some riders that were recently closed…
Questions Linger – as to Where the VA Industry, Certain Players are Headed
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,...
“Headwinds” – Market Doldrums Caused Problems for VA Issuers in 3Q11
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...