Passport 4 review

It depends, and mostly it depends on whether you'd be better off in a different Passport election. On its own terms, Passport 4 is a clean, no-fee, A+-rated fixed annuity with an automatic return-of-premium guarantee. But at this rate snapshot, the 5-year election on the same surrender schedule pays the same 3.65% for a longer lock, which means Passport 4 is hard to justify unless you have a specific reason to want the guarantee to expire in year 4 rather than year 5.

The rational reasons to buy Passport 4 are the same reasons to buy any Columbus Life MYGA: an A+-rated carrier, no policy fees or administrative charges, an automatic 100%-of-premium return guarantee, and a first-year rate enhancement that lifts the effective year-one yield above 5.6%. Someone might also choose the 4-year election deliberately — for example, to time the rate reset to a known life event (a required distribution, a planned annuitization, or a maturity they want to coordinate with another account) rather than defaulting to the longest lock available.

This fits a buyer who has already decided they want a Columbus Life Passport contract with the full 7-year surrender schedule and has a concrete reason for wanting the rate guarantee to reset after year 4 specifically — not just "shorter sounds safer." It is a weaker fit for a buyer comparing elections purely on rate, since the 5-year election currently ties it. It is not a fit for anyone who might need principal access above the 10% free-withdrawal allowance in the first several years, and it's not available to New York residents at all.

"Passport 4" names the length of the interest-rate guarantee, not the length of your commitment to the contract. Every Passport variant — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 7-year guarantee — sits inside the identical 7-year surrender schedule. Choosing "4" only tells the carrier how long to lock your rate before it starts resetting annually at its own discretion. You are buying a fixed-rate savings vehicle with tax deferral and a guaranteed floor, not a product whose real-world liquidity changes based on which numeral is in the name.

Passport 4 credits a single declared fixed rate — currently 3.65% — locked for four contract years. On top of that, a first-year-only 2.00% interest rate enhancement applies (Columbus Life is explicit that this is a rate bonus, not a premium bonus, so it doesn't inflate your account value the way a bonus annuity would — it just adds to the credited rate in year one only), producing an effective first-year crediting rate near 5.65%. From year two through the end of year four, the rate reverts to the plain 3.65% declared rate. When year four ends, Columbus Life begins declaring a new rate annually, at its own discretion, with a contractual floor set at issue somewhere between 1% and 3% as required by state nonforfeiture law. Nothing in the available materials discloses how the carrier has historically set that renewal rate, so you're trusting the floor, not a target.

The automatic money-back guarantee matters more here than in most MYGAs, because it's the backstop for the renewal-rate uncertainty described above. Columbus Life guarantees the cash surrender value will be at least 100% of premium paid (adjusted for withdrawals), at no extra charge, on every Passport contract. That means even if the post-year-four renewal rate lands at the contractual floor for years, your principal itself isn't at risk of erosion below what you put in — the risk is entirely opportunity cost, not loss.

There's no MVA on this contract, which simplifies the liquidity picture: the surrender charge is the only cost of early access, and it follows a flat, disclosed schedule. The real liquidity story on Passport 4 isn't the schedule itself, though — it's the mismatch between the rate guarantee and the surrender schedule. The 4-year rate lock expires at the start of contract year five, but three surrender-charge years (5%, 4%, and 3%) remain after that. If the renewal rate disappoints, your only surrender-charge-free exits are the standard ones: the 10% annual free withdrawal, a long-term-care or terminal-illness waiver, an RMD or 72(t) distribution, annuitization, or death. There is no rate-triggered bailout provision anywhere in the disclosed materials — a feature some competing MYGAs build in specifically to address this exact gap.

There are no fees to weigh here — no policy fee, no administrative charge, and no cost for either surrender-charge waiver rider (long-term care confinement or terminal illness). That's a genuine positive. The tradeoff isn't a fee, it's a structural one: choosing the 4-year election over the 5-year election, at this rate snapshot, buys you nothing in rate and costs you a full extra year of renewal-rate exposure while still inside the surrender period. If you're comparing Passport elections rather than shopping Passport 4 in isolation, that's the number to run first.

Legal Entity: Columbus Life Insurance Company

Parent: Western & Southern Financial Group

A.M. Best Rating: A+