Passport 7 review

It depends on what you're optimizing for. If certainty is the priority — one rate, no renewal cliff, no math to redo in year five or six — Passport 7 does exactly what it says on the label, and it does it cleanly, with an A+-rated carrier, no MVA, and no fees beyond the surrender charge. If yield is the priority, it's a weaker pick: 3.50% for seven years is the lowest rate in its own product family, and it was below the broader 7-year MYGA market as of the 4/1/2026 snapshot used here.

The rational reason to buy Passport 7 over a shorter Passport sibling is to eliminate renewal-rate risk entirely. A buyer who selects Passport 5 locks a rate for five years but still sits inside a 7-year surrender schedule — meaning years six and seven pay whatever Columbus Life declares at renewal, with no guaranteed floor above the contractual 1%-3% minimum. Passport 7 removes that gap completely: the rate you're quoted at issue is the rate you earn every year until the surrender charge itself disappears. For someone who specifically dislikes not knowing what a renewal rate will be, that's worth something even at a lower headline number.

I think Passport 7 is best for a conservative saver, likely near or in retirement, who has non-qualified or qualified dollars they won't need for seven years and who would rather take a known, if modest, rate than accept any renewal-rate uncertainty. It's a reasonable fit for someone using this as one piece of a laddered fixed-income allocation rather than a full retirement solution. It's a weaker fit for anyone shopping primarily on yield, anyone who might need principal back inside seven years, and anyone in New York, Alaska, or Oregon, where it isn't approved.

You're not buying an investment with upside potential — there's no index participation, no market exposure, and no structured payoff to chase. You're buying a seven-year interest-rate commitment from an insurance company: Columbus Life declares 3.50% at issue, and that number doesn't change for any of the seven years you're in the contract, positive or negative. In exchange for giving up access to that principal (beyond the free-withdrawal amount) for seven years, you get a rate that's fixed and known on day one, plus a first-year interest-rate enhancement that pads year one specifically — not a bonus added to your principal, but an extra 2.00% credited to the interest rate in year one only, then removed for years two through seven. The base 3.50% is what actually carries the contract.

Passport is a single chassis with six rate-guarantee elections (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 7 years), but every election sits inside the same fixed 7-year surrender schedule (7%, 7%, 7%, 6%, 5%, 4%, 3%). That distinction matters more than it sounds. On Passport 1 through 5, the rate guarantee is shorter than the surrender schedule, so the contract has a "renewal cliff": once the initial guarantee period ends, Columbus Life declares a new rate annually, and you have no way to know in advance what that rate will be — you're still locked in by the surrender charge, but no longer locked in on rate. Passport 7 is the only election in the family where the rate-guarantee period and the surrender period are identical. The 3.50% rate quoted at issue is guaranteed for all seven years, so there's no point in the contract where you're exposed to an unknown renewal rate while still facing an exit penalty. On top of the base rate, the current rate table includes a first-year-only 2.00% interest-rate enhancement — again, an interest credit, not a premium addition — that lifts year-one crediting before reverting to the flat 3.50% for years two through seven.

Compare Passport 7 to Passport 5 directly, because the tradeoff is easy to misread. On the same 4/1/2026 rate sheet, Passport 5 pays 3.65% — 0.15 percentage points more than Passport 7's 3.50%. It's tempting to read that as "get almost the same rate and free up your money two years sooner," but that's not how the surrender schedule works. Both Passport 5 and Passport 7 sit inside the identical 7-year, 7/7/7/6/5/4/3 surrender schedule. Choosing Passport 5 doesn't shorten your surrender exposure by a single day — it only shortens how long your rate is guaranteed. After year five, Passport 5's rate resets annually while you're still two years away from a penalty-free exit. So the real comparison isn't "3.50% for seven years vs. 3.65% for five years, free after that" — it's "3.50% guaranteed for the full commitment vs. 3.65% guaranteed for part of the commitment, with an unknown rate for the remainder." Passport 7 is more expensive in a different sense: it costs 0.15% in exchange for removing that uncertainty completely.

This is a seven-year commitment, full stop — the surrender schedule runs 7%, 7%, 7%, 6%, 5%, 4%, 3% regardless of which Passport rate election is chosen, and there's no market value adjustment layered on top, so the surrender charge is the entire exit cost (no additional interest-rate-driven penalty or bonus). Each contract year, 10% of account value is available free of surrender charge, non-cumulative (unused free-withdrawal amounts don't roll forward), with a $250 minimum withdrawal. Systematic withdrawals of either the 10% free amount or interest-only earnings are available monthly, quarterly, semiannual, or annual, though not with a Roth IRA. Surrender charges are additionally waived for confinement to a long-term care facility or hospital for 30-plus consecutive days, terminal illness with a life expectancy of 12 months or less, required minimum distributions and 72(t) substantially equal periodic distributions, annuitization beginning at least two years into the contract with level payments for at least five years, and death of the owner. Those waivers are standard for this category, not a distinguishing feature, but they do mean the product handles the predictable liquidity needs (RMDs, a terminal diagnosis, a nursing-home stay) without penalty even though it's built for buyers who don't plan to touch the money.

There are no policy fees, administrative charges, or rider fees on Passport 7 — the only cost of exiting early is the surrender charge itself, and there's no income rider to carry a fee in the first place. The real tradeoff isn't a line-item fee; it's opportunity cost. Locking 3.50% for seven years means that if rates rise during the contract term, there's no adjustment — the rate is fixed regardless of what happens in the broader market. The minimum guaranteed surrender value floor (100% of premium paid, less withdrawals, growing at a contractual minimum between 1% and 3%) protects against the insurer ever crediting less than that floor, but it doesn't protect against simply having locked a below-market rate for the full term. That's the honest cost of buying certainty here: a rate that was already the lowest in its own family, and below the broader 7-year MYGA market, at the 4/1/2026 snapshot used for this review.

Legal Entity: Columbus Life Insurance Company

Parent: Western & Southern Financial Group

A.M. Best Rating: A+