Research & Reports

The prospectus update season might have been quieter than usual, but in recent weeks we’ve seen an interesting assortment of variable annuity product and feature filings, most of which will take effect during July and...

The fortunes of the variable annuity business are still largely dictated by the performance of companies with the most attractive guaranteed living benefits, and, based on some improvement we saw from a few insurers we...

Last week we saw a surge in SEC filings related to variable annuities – many of them May 1 prospectus updates – and in our next few reports we’ll comment on interesting things we found...

So far this year we’re seen a number of variable annuity insurers start building in higher guaranteed annual withdrawal amounts (GAWAs) on their lifetime withdrawal riders. Some of these new schemes have been rather creative,...

Over the recent past we’ve described the variable annuity business as being in a period where fewer new product ideas are being launched than we’re used to for this time of year. Thus we weren’t...

We are accustomed to seeing numerous variable annuity ideas get introduced in early spring, however lately things have become slower than usual. We attribute this to insurers being a bit tentative about taking any serious...

Because of the diminished sales of variable annuities last year, we can’t help but wonder whether the industry can eventually participate more fully in the recovery of the financial markets – or, will it continue...

With this report we acknowledge we fell behind on our coverage of variable insurance underlying funds, so we’re going to take the opportunity to get caught up with what happened in the months of January...