Palladium MYG 10 (NY) review

Depends. Structurally, this is one of the more honest products in its own family — the rate guarantee and the surrender schedule run the same 10 years, so you know exactly what you're locked into for exactly as long as you're locked into it. That's not true of the shorter Palladium NY durations, which carry the same 10-year surrender schedule but only guarantee their rate for 3, 5, 6, or 7 years, leaving buyers exposed to a rate reset mid-contract. But "good" for you also depends on whether the current rate is actually competitive, and that's the one thing this review can't confirm — the rate figures on file are from a late-2022 Wink data pull, not a live quote.

The rational case for this product is certainty without a reset clause. Someone shopping the Palladium NY family who wants a full decade of guaranteed rate — not just a decade of surrender exposure with a shorter rate guarantee tucked inside it — buys the 10-year version specifically because it's the only one where those two clocks match. Add in the lack of an MVA, which means a surrender-period withdrawal above the free amount costs a flat percentage rather than one that moves with interest rates, and a full account value death benefit, and you get a product that's easy to explain to a beneficiary or a spouse. It's a fit for someone who has decided they want a locked-rate annuity and specifically wants the version with no strings attached at renewal.

This is best for a New York resident, qualified or non-qualified money either way, who doesn't expect to need more than the 10% annual free-withdrawal allowance for the next decade and wants a simple, single-rate contract instead of an indexed strategy or an income rider they'd have to evaluate separately. Issue ages run 0-90, but a buyer in their 80s taking this out to the full 10 years should think hard about whether a decade-long lock still makes sense at that stage of life — the free-withdrawal allowance and the nursing-home/disability surrender waivers help, but they don't replace genuine liquidity. It's a weaker fit for anyone who wants index-linked upside, a built-in income stream, or who isn't sure they'll want this money locked away for the full term.

Strip away the brand name and this is a declared-rate contract — a promise from an A.M. Best A-rated insurer to credit your account a fixed percentage every year for 10 years, full stop. There's no index, no participation rate, no cap, no buffer. You're not buying market exposure of any kind; you're buying the insurer's balance sheet and its willingness to pay a fixed rate for a decade, in exchange for you agreeing not to pull more than the free-withdrawal amount out early. The "MYG" in the product name stands for multi-year guaranteed — that's the entire value proposition, and everything else in this contract (the death benefit, the surrender waivers, the free-withdrawal terms) exists to support that one core promise.

The core feature is the banded declared rate. Rather than one number for every buyer, American National of New York prints three tiers by premium size — a Low Band rate for smaller contracts, a step up at $100,000, and another step up at $250,000. As of the Wink data on file (dated 11/1/2022, and by our reading roughly 3.7 years stale at the time of this review), those bands were 4.05% (Low Band), 4.15% ($100,000+), and 4.30% ($250,000+), each guaranteed for the full 10-year term. Treat every one of those numbers as a snapshot of what this product used to pay, not a live quote — ask a licensed agent for the current declared rate at your premium level before you assume any of these figures still apply. What doesn't change regardless of the actual current rate is the mechanic: whatever band and rate you lock in at issue holds for all 10 years, with no reset in between.

The second feature worth understanding is what makes this specific duration different from its own siblings. Every Palladium NY product — the 3-, 5-, 6-, 7-, and 10-year versions — shares the identical 10-year surrender-charge schedule (8%, 8%, 8%, 7%, 6%, 5%, 4%, 3%, 2%, 1%). But only the 10-year version guarantees its rate for the full length of that schedule. Buy the 3-year sibling, for example, and after year 3 your rate resets to whatever American National of New York is then declaring — you get a 30-day penalty-free window to surrender, renew into a new guarantee period, or annuitize instead, but if you don't act in that window you're re-enrolled at the new rate while still subject to years 4 through 10 of the original declining surrender schedule. The 10-year version has no such gap: the rate you lock in at issue is the rate you have for as long as the surrender charge applies. Whether a full decade of commitment is worth that certainty is the real question here, not a product design flaw.

You're trading 10 years of full liquidity for a locked rate, with a modest release valve along the way. In year 1, only interest earned is available penalty-free — no principal. From year 2 onward, you can withdraw up to 10% of account value annually without triggering a surrender charge. Anything above that runs into the declining schedule below, which starts at 8% and steps down to 1% by year 10. There's no market value adjustment on this NY filing, which is a genuine point in its favor: an MVA can make a surrender-period withdrawal cost more or less depending on where interest rates have moved since issue, and this product simply doesn't have that variable to worry about — the surrender charge is the surrender charge, full stop. Surrender charges are also waived for qualifying nursing home confinement or disability, which softens the worst-case scenario without changing the everyday liquidity picture. RMD treatment isn't addressed in the source material, so if this contract will hold qualified money, confirm directly with the carrier how required distributions interact with the free-withdrawal allowance.

There's no explicit rider fee here because there's no rider — no income rider, no chronic illness rider, and no separately-priced enhanced death benefit. No base contract fee, mortality and expense charge, or annual contract fee is disclosed in the source materials either. The real cost isn't a line-item fee — it's opportunity cost. You're locking money away for 10 years at a rate this review can't confirm is current, and the minimum guaranteed surrender value only tells us the state-mandated floor (1%-3% guaranteed annual return) rather than the specific premium-accumulation percentage American National of New York actually uses, which the brochure doesn't disclose. If you're taking this contract out to a full decade, that combination — stale headline rate, undisclosed MGSV mechanics — is worth pressing your agent on before you sign.

Legal Entity: American National Life Insurance Company of New York

Parent: American National Group

A.M. Best Rating: A