Heritage Premier Plus 3 review

Depends on what you're comparing it to. Against other bank-CD-style options, yes — a locked multi-year rate with an A- rated carrier, liberal interest withdrawals, and a built-in health waiver is a reasonable place to park money you won't need for three years. Against its own sibling, Heritage Premier 3, it's a wash at best: that plain version credits a flat 4.70% for all three years, which compounds to roughly the same — or slightly more — than Premier Plus's front-loaded 5.35%/4.35%/4.35% structure, without the higher surrender charges.

Someone would buy this because the year-one rate looks strong on paper and the product structure — a 3-year lock, interest-only access, no premium bonus complexity — is simple to understand. The health waiver rider adds a real safety net for nursing home confinement, terminal illness, disability, or home health care needs without an extra fee. For a buyer who wants a short commitment from a stable, A- rated carrier and doesn't want to shop rate sheets across ten companies, this covers the basics competently.

This fits someone in retirement or pre-retirement, in either a qualified (IRA) or non-qualified account, who has $10,000 or more they're comfortable locking up for exactly three years and who places some value on the health waiver access. It's a better fit for someone who will actually hold the contract the full term — the bonus structure means an early surrender in year one captures a great rate but still faces the largest surrender charge (8.2%) of the schedule. It's not approved for CA or NY residents, and IRA money in this product is only available in Colorado, Maine, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

Strip away the "Plus" name and the marketing framing, and this is a 3-year rate lock with one twist: the insurer front-loads part of the guaranteed yield into year one. You're not buying a bonus that adds to your account value at issue — that would show up as extra principal on day one — you're buying a temporarily elevated interest rate for twelve months, after which the rate resets down to the 4.35% base for the remaining two years. The brochure itself is careful to label this an "Interest Rate Bonus, not Premium Bonus," which is the correct distinction: nothing gets added to your principal, only to the rate that principal earns in year one.

The crediting structure is straightforward once you see through the bonus label. Capitol Life declares a 4.35% base rate for the full 3-year term. In year one only, a 1.00% interest rate bonus lifts the effective credited rate to 5.35%. In years two and three, the rate reverts to the 4.35% base — there's no separate renewal risk here since the whole-term rate is guaranteed upfront, unlike products that only guarantee year one and reset unpredictably after. Compare the compounded result to the plain Heritage Premier 3, which simply credits a flat 4.70% for all three years with no bonus mechanic at all: run both structures out to year three and they land within a fraction of a percentage point of each other, with the plain version arguably coming out slightly ahead. The bonus makes the marketing rate look bigger; it doesn't clearly make the money grow faster.

The health waiver rider is the more substantive feature here, and it's included at no additional cost. It covers nursing home confinement, terminal illness diagnosis, disability, and home health care needs, and it waives surrender charges — up to 10% of accumulated value in the first year, and up to 50% thereafter — if one of those events occurs. That's meaningful because it's the one feature in this contract that actually protects against something other than interest rate movement: a health event that would otherwise force an expensive early surrender.

Systematic interest-only withdrawals are available once the contract has been in force 30 days, with a $100 minimum per withdrawal. That's a genuinely liberal free-withdrawal provision for a MYGA — many multi-year guaranteed annuities restrict free withdrawals to RMDs only, or delay any access until after the first contract year. Beyond the interest-only allowance, withdrawals are subject to the surrender schedule: 8.2% in year one, 7.2% in year two, and 6.2% in year three, plus a market value adjustment (MVA — an adjustment that can increase or decrease your surrender penalty depending on how interest rates have moved since you bought the contract). Notably, this schedule runs 0.1 percentage point higher in every year than the plain Heritage Premier 3's 8.1%/7.1%/6.1% schedule — a small but real cost tacked onto the version with the flashier year-one rate.

There's no explicit rider fee here — the health waiver is bundled in at no charge, and there's no income rider to layer a fee onto. The real cost to think about is the opportunity cost baked into the rate design: the 1.00% first-year bonus is funded, at least in part, by a base rate (4.35%) that runs below the plain sibling's flat 4.70%. Nothing is disclosed as a separate charge, but the net effect over three years is similar to paying for a good headline number with a slightly lower ongoing rate and a slightly higher surrender schedule.

Legal Entity: Capitol Life Insurance Company

Parent: Liberty Bankers Insurance Group

A.M. Best Rating: A-