Research & Reports
VA Insurers are Looking to Calibrate Their Sales – Using a Variety of Means
Around the variable annuity industry some insurers are attempting to regulate their rate of business through focused initiatives, whether related to product, distribution, or both. Some are trying to deliberately slow their sales; others are...
“Bowing Out” – Hartford’s Departure from the VA Space and What it May Portend
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...
VA Insurers are Taking Divergent Paths in this Period of Uncertainty
The way we see it, variable annuity insurers are moving in one of two directions these days: either de-risking, or enhancing their products with an eye toward moving up the market share ranks. What this...
The Price of De-Risking: Sales for Most VA Issuers Dropped in 4Q11
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,...
Results Are Coming In – and VA Sales Appear to Have Cooled Off
As we write this, stock-traded insurers are in the middle of earnings season, and 4Q11 variable annuity sales data are being released. So far, most companies we monitor regularly have been reporting sequential declines in...
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...