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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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“Trading Places” – De-Risking Caused Shifts in the VA Market During 2Q11

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...

Shifting and Moving – Some Thoughts on Competition in the VA Space

It’s our contention that we are in a period of transition within the variable annuity industry, because some leading insurers have hinted their sales have exceeded comfort levels, and these companies will thus be de-risking....

Benefits and Sales – are Intimately Linked in This Variable Annuity Market

It probably no longer bears repeating, but an insurer’s variable annuity deposits nowadays are directly connected to the relative strength of its guaranteed benefits. We are in a period where this rule of thumb is...

Summer Sizzle – VA Product and Benefit Changes Keep Coming

Lately we’ve seen a number of new or revised variable annuity contracts and benefits filed with the SEC, and we find that interesting, since during the summer such activity tends to slow down. We suspect...

Update: Specialty Guaranteed Minimum Death Benefits

This grid is an update to our coverage of specialty Guaranteed Minimum Death Benefits (GMDBs) that work in tandem with various living benefits…

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from June, 2011

In this, our regular commentary about variable insurance funds from the prior month, we’ll start off by saying this June we saw a familiar pattern for the time of year, namely that there were not...

Emerging Details – Regarding MetLife’s New VA Guaranteed Benefits

Since we published our last report, we discovered that MetLife registered its new variable annuity guaranteed benefits with the Florida insurance department, and that filing contained more information – albeit some of it bracketed –...

“Cliffhanger” Filings – Containing New Guaranteed Benefits from MetLife

Late last week MetLife submitted initial registrations of several new variable annuity guaranteed death and income benefits to the SEC, and we thought this was noteworthy for a number of reasons. In this report we’ll...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from May, 2011

We thought the month of May was rather active in terms of SEC filings related to variable insurance underlying funds. There was an interesting mix of movement: sub-account platforms were streamlined, new management fee arrangements...