Research & Reports

Each year we provide, with our last issue of December, a quick rundown of how the variable annuity business performed so far, from our perspective, and a few forward-looking thoughts for the New Year. While...

In this report we’ll discuss deferred income annuities (DIAs), products that, in our view, were built to provide less risky forms of guaranteed income as compared to living benefits, and to answer longstanding objections to...

Industry research firms began reporting third quarter sales not long ago, and the numbers confirmed our earlier suspicions, that variable annuity sales would fell in the quarter, while total industry output was sustained through a...

We just completed our third quarter review of variable annuity business results of selected stock-traded insurers and found that for all of them, sales fell sequentially during that time period. Market volatility was the most-often...

It seems like the year is going by very fast – the third quarter is winding down already and yet, in our view, it’s hard to forecast how the variable annuity business will finish up...

This commentary will be a short reflection on how a distribution arm of Voya Financial has curtailed the sale of certain variable annuity share classes with guaranteed benefits, at the insistence of regulators. It’s our...

This commentary will be a brief reflection on recent developments regarding the income-taking aspects of annuities that we think our subscribers should monitor – as it’s not clear to us yet how much of an...

Overall, we’re of the opinion that second quarter earnings for stock-traded insurers we watch regularly were pretty strong, and for all of them, variable annuity sales went up sequentially, thus we suspect the industry experienced...

Although it will take time for second quarter variable annuity sales data to come out, in this commentary we’ll give our suspicions on how the industry might have moved during that time period. The numbers...