Research & Reports
Reviewing Recent Filings – Containing RILAs, CDAs and GLWBs
In this commentary we’ll get caught up with product filing activity of recent months, in which we saw plenty of new concepts entering the pipeline – most of them related to registered index-linked annuities (RILAs),...
Some Springtime Storylines for the U.S. Annuity Business in 2021
Now that spring is upon us, the worst of the COVID-19 crisis hopefully over, and the first quarter of the year is drawing to a close, we have started to get a handle on where...
Commencing Our 2021 Tracking – of VA Benefit Rate Sheet Changes
Since it’s become ever more common for insurers to design variable annuity benefits with components that can be changed periodically via rate sheet, we now consider the monitoring of such benefits as one of the...
An Outlook on Registered Index-Linked Annuities – as We Enter 2021
This year we intend on providing our subscribers with more in-depth coverage of registered index-linked annuities (RILAs), firstly because we expect their sales to continue outpacing all other annuity types, secondly because we think insurers...
The Year 2020 Was Fraught With Challenges for Annuity Insurers
This will be our customary year-end report, based on what we know from U.S. annuity industry data through the third quarter. It certainly goes without saying that 2020 was a trying one for us all,...
Assessing Variable Annuity Benefit Rate Sheet Changes of Recent Months
It’s about time we got caught up with variable annuity benefit rate sheets because much has happened since we last visited the subject. Most changes insurers have been making of late involve de-risking – even...
Most Stock-Traded Insurers’ Annuity Sales Grew – Sequentially – in Q3
As we do each quarter, we reviewed business results of stock-traded insurers we watch regularly and discovered that for most of them, annuity sales improved slightly compared to the prior quarter, but were still lower...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from October, 2020
During October we saw a number of new variable fund registrations and not surprisingly, most of them will invest in fixed income – an asset class that has managed to generate positive flows in recent...
Jackson National Files New RILAs – and Other Recent Developments
In this report we’ll discuss new registered index-linked annuities filed recently by Jackson National, currently the leader in variable annuity sales in the U.S., and one of the only major insurers not to offer such...