ForeIncome II 5-Year with Guaranteed Income Builder review

It depends on your plan. This is a good annuity for someone who wants protected lifetime income, values a 10% annual roll-up while deferring, and specifically prefers a shorter surrender commitment than most income products carry. It is a weaker fit for someone who wants maximum accumulation, wants the cheapest possible income rider, or who plans to defer income for the rider's full 15-year window, because at that point the short surrender period stops being an advantage and you are paying a fee for a guarantee you could find more cheaply on a longer contract.

The main reason to buy ForeIncome II 5-Year is to lock in a guaranteed lifetime income stream with principal protection while keeping more flexibility than a typical income annuity allows. The 10% annual roll-up on the income base means your future guaranteed withdrawal grows steadily even if the index strategies have a flat year. The secondary reason is the built-in chronic illness benefit, which can increase your income if you can no longer perform certain daily activities — at no extra charge. For a buyer who wants income certainty but is nervous about a long lock-up, the five-year surrender is the part that makes this contract worth a look over its longer-dated cousins.

I think this annuity is best for someone in the pre-retirement or early-retirement window — roughly mid-50s to early 70s — who wants to use long-term money to build future income but wants the money to be fully accessible again within five years rather than ten. It suits a buyer who values having the chronic illness enhancement built in, and who expects to activate income within a handful of years rather than deferring for the maximum 15. It is less attractive for a buyer who mainly wants growth, who wants the simplest or cheapest income guarantee, or who expects to need regular access to principal above the 10% free amount during the surrender years.

You are not buying stock-market upside. You are buying a lifetime income framework wrapped around a principal-protected annuity, and the heart of it is the Guaranteed Income Builder rider. Your premium establishes a separate "withdrawal base" — a bookkeeping figure used only to calculate income, not a cash value you can walk away with. That base grows by a guaranteed 10% each year you wait, for up to 15 years or until you start income, whichever comes first. When you activate, your age and the base determine a guaranteed annual withdrawal you can take for life, even if the actual account value runs to zero. The index crediting on the side matters less here than it does on a pure accumulation FIA, because this contract is engineered to support the income guarantee first.

The Guaranteed Income Builder Benefit (formally the Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefit XII) is built into the contract rather than optional. Before you turn income on, the rider applies a 10% guaranteed annual credit to the withdrawal base, and that credit continues for up to 15 years or until you activate income. That roll-up is a simple, predictable way to grow your future income figure without depending on how the index strategies actually perform. The fee for the rider is 1.20% per year, charged on the withdrawal base — so as the base grows, the dollar fee grows with it. When you activate, the income is calculated as a percentage of that withdrawal base based on your age, and it continues for life. Importantly, the withdrawal base is not a lump sum you can take; it only governs the lifetime income amount.

The most meaningful secondary feature is the Income Enhancement Benefit — a chronic illness provision included at no additional cost. If you become unable to perform certain activities of daily living, this benefit can increase your income payments to help cover care costs, without you having to buy a separate long-term-care policy or pay a standalone rider charge. That kind of care-cost support is genuinely useful in an income product, and the fact that it is bundled in for free improves the value proposition. The contract also includes nursing care and terminal illness waivers at no additional charge, which let you access funds without surrender penalties under qualifying circumstances.

This is the most unusual part of the contract, and it deserves a careful read. The surrender period is only five years, with charges of 8%, 8%, 7%, 6%, and 5%, after which they fall to zero. That is short for an income-focused annuity — most income products run seven to ten years. After year one you can take up to 10% of the beginning-of-year contract value each year penalty-free (in year one it is 10% of premium). A market value adjustment — MVA, meaning your surrender value can move up or down with interest rates — applies to amounts beyond the free withdrawal during the surrender period.

Here is the tension you need to understand. The rider's 10% roll-up is designed to reward you for deferring income, and it can run up to 15 years. But the surrender charges vanish after just five. That means once you are past year five, you can fully cash out at no penalty, yet the contract still wants you to keep deferring and keep paying the 1.20% rider fee to maximize the income guarantee. For a buyer who plans to activate income around years five to eight, this is a genuine advantage — you get the income guarantee and regain full liquidity at roughly the same time. For a buyer who plans to defer the full 15 years, the short surrender stops mattering, and you are simply paying a higher-than-average rider fee. Match your activation timeline to the surrender window and the design works in your favor; ignore it and you are paying for flexibility you are not using.

The headline cost is the 1.20% annual rider fee charged on the withdrawal base. That is higher than several competing built-in income FIAs, which often sit closer to 1.00% to 1.10%, and because it is charged on the growing withdrawal base rather than the account value, the dollar amount climbs as the roll-up compounds. The trade is straightforward: that fee buys you the guaranteed 10% roll-up and the lifetime income floor, so whether it is worth it depends on whether you actually activate income and live long enough to benefit from the guarantee. If you cancel before turning income on, you have paid for a feature you never used.

On the crediting side, the contract offers a fixed account at 2.75% and a performance-triggered account at 3.75%, with index caps reported in the 4.50% to 6.50% range and a 100% participation rate, across indices including the S&P 500, Nasdaq-100 Agile 15%, and several risk-controlled volatility-managed indices. These crediting figures came from the brochure materials at medium confidence and are snapshots that change over time — ask for the current rate sheet before buying. As with most income-first FIAs, the caps are modest because the contract is built to fund the income guarantee, not to maximize growth.

Legal Entity: Forethought Life Insurance Company

Parent: Global Atlantic Financial Group

A.M. Best Rating: A

ForeIncome II is issued by Forethought Life Insurance Company, a Global Atlantic Financial Group company. The A.M. Best rating of A places the carrier in solid, financially secure territory, though it is a step below the A+ and A++ grades carried by some of the largest annuity issuers. For a long-dated income guarantee, carrier strength matters, and an A rating is reassuring without being top of the scale.