Certainty Select 8 review

It depends mostly on your view of the carrier. As a piece of financial engineering, this is a good annuity: no explicit fees, a locked rate for a meaningful stretch, an MGSV floor that protects you even in a low-rate renewal environment, and optional riders that cost nothing to add. What keeps it from a higher rating is that EquiTrust carries a B++ rating from A.M. Best, which is a step below the A- floor a lot of shoppers use for anything longer than a few years. Whether that matters to you is a personal risk call, not a product flaw.

The appeal is simplicity and rate certainty over a long horizon. Someone with money they genuinely don't need for eight years can lock 5.20% today without worrying about renewal risk resetting them lower next year, without paying a rider fee, and without giving up a portion of premium to a bonus gimmick that gets clawed back through a lower crediting rate. The 30-day window before the guarantee period ends is also a real out — you're not locked into an automatic renewal you don't want.

I think this fits a buyer roughly in their 50s through late 70s who has non-qualified or IRA money earmarked for the long term, wants a CD-like guarantee without CD-like taxation timing, and either isn't concerned about A.M. Best ratings below A- or has already decided B++ is an acceptable trade for the rate. It's a weaker fit for someone who might need meaningful access to principal in the first several years, since the base contract's free withdrawal is limited to interest earned rather than a percentage of the account.

Strip away the "Certainty Select" branding and this is a contract that credits a single fixed rate — 5.20% as of this writing — for eight years, tax-deferred, with a guaranteed floor (the MGSV) underneath it in case you surrender early. You're not buying market exposure, an index strategy, or an income guarantee. You're buying a rate lock and a company's promise to pay it, which is why the carrier's financial strength rating matters more here than it would on a shorter-duration product.

The core feature is the fixed-rate crediting itself: EquiTrust guarantees 5.20% for the full 8-year term, applied to the Accumulation Value with no cap, participation rate, or spread to worry about — every dollar of that rate reaches the contract. At the end of the 8 years, EquiTrust automatically renews the contract for another 8-year guarantee period unless the owner acts during the 30-day window before expiration. In that window, the owner can take a penalty-free partial withdrawal, surrender the full contract without penalty, or annuitize over at least 10 years or for life. That renewal design is worth noting — if you do nothing, you're re-committing to another 8-year term at whatever rate EquiTrust sets at that time, which may or may not be competitive.

The secondary feature that matters most here is the pair of no-cost optional riders, because they change the product's shape without changing its price. The liquidity rider trades a reduced death benefit for a materially better annual withdrawal allowance (up to 10% of the prior year's Accumulation Value, versus interest-only on the base contract) and a lower surrender charge schedule. The separate death benefit rider swaps the default Accumulation Value payout for a choice between an immediate cash surrender value or an income stream paid over at least five years or for life. Neither rider costs anything extra, but each one asks the buyer to give something up — flexibility in exchange for liquidity, or a lump sum in exchange for payout choice. Neither is available in North Carolina, Ohio, or Texas.

Eight years is a long commitment, and the surrender schedule below reflects that: charges start at 10% and step down slowly, still sitting at 7% in years 7 and 8. On the base contract, the only money you can touch without a charge is interest already earned — there's no automatic 10%-of-premium annual withdrawal like many competing MYGAs build in by default. If ongoing liquidity matters to you, the no-cost optional rider closes most of that gap by opening up to 10% of the prior anniversary's value each year after year one, but it does so by reducing the death benefit, so it's a real tradeoff rather than a free upgrade. A market value adjustment (MVA) applies to withdrawals above the free amount in every state except Vermont, meaning excess withdrawals could cost more or less than the stated surrender charge depending on where interest rates have moved since issue. Required minimum distributions aren't addressed in the reviewed materials, so buyers using qualified money should confirm RMD treatment directly with EquiTrust or their advisor before assuming the free-withdrawal terms will cover a mandated distribution.

There are no explicit fees on this contract — no M&E charge, no product fee, no administration fee, and no cost to add either optional rider. That's a genuine point in Certainty Select 8's favor: the tradeoffs here are structural rather than a line-item expense. The real cost of the optional liquidity rider is a reduced death benefit, and the real cost of the optional death-benefit-choice rider is giving up the base contract's default payout structure in exchange for flexibility at claim time. The biggest tradeoff outside the contract itself is the carrier's B++ A.M. Best rating — not a fee, but a credit-quality discount that a buyer should factor in against the 5.20% headline rate when comparing this to A- or better alternatives paying a similar rate.

Legal Entity: EquiTrust Life Insurance Company

Parent: Guggenheim Partners

A.M. Best Rating: B++