
Research & Reports
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from August, 2010
It’s once again time for us to provide our monthly update on filings of variable insurance funds, and our first observation is that in August there were few new registrations, but we’re used to seeing...
Back to School – Viewpoints on VA Industry Issues as Q3 Winds Down
The weather has gotten cooler, football season has commenced, and families are back from vacation, all these things serving to remind us that we are coming to the end of the third quarter. In this...
GLWB Fiddling – Recent Creativity in Rider Designs and Functions
In the variable annuity marketplace there remains a minority of insurers who are tweaking and modifying their guaranteed living benefits regularly, to match up better against the competition. We would say we’re in a period...
Contract Trends – Fresh Ideas, Approaches in New Registrations
We continue to see new variable annuity contracts in the pipeline that have what we call non-traditional chassis and pricing, and we think insurance companies are developing such products to anticipate future needs – not...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from July, 2010
This report contains our usual highlights of variable insurance portfolio filings from the prior month, but we’ll also spend a little time considering investment platform trends around the industry, which have a strong connection to...
Risk Sensitivity – As it Relates to VA Insurers’ Guaranteed Benefits
In our regular duties we are mostly occupied with following manufacturing trends in the variable annuity business, endeavoring to sort out what is meaningful from what is not. However we also are very interested in...
Rising Tide – Variable Annuity Insurers See Deposits Lift in Q2
We were somewhat surprised to find that variable annuity deposits for most of the stock-traded life insurance companies we monitor regularly were quite strong in the second quarter. Therefore we now suspect the industry as...
Change is Constant – and Probably Unavoidable for VA Issuers
Lately we have found the kind of product adjustments and upgrades occurring around the variable annuity business to be rather interesting and revealing about the priorities of insurers, their distribution partners and clients. We imagine...
Update: Summaries of Contingent Annuity Contracts
This is an update of a grid with summaries of contingent annuities filed with the SEC, reflecting some of the latest developments in this product type…