SecureFore 3-Year review

Yes, for the right use case. If you have a chunk of short-term savings that you won't need for three years and you're comparing it to CDs or short-duration Treasuries, SecureFore 3 is a reasonable alternative. The rate is locked, growth is tax-deferred, and the commitment is short enough that the surrender risk is manageable if you plan accordingly. It is less useful if you need flexibility during those three years or if you're shopping for income guarantees.

The most common rational use case is reinvesting a maturing CD or Treasury into something with a comparable rate but tax-deferred treatment. A saver in their late 50s or 60s with money in a taxable brokerage account gets a meaningful benefit from deferring interest income for three years before converting to retirement income or reinvesting. The secondary reason is rate certainty — in a rate environment where short-term instruments fluctuate at renewal, locking in a rate for three years removes reinvestment risk.

I think SecureFore 3 is best for pre-retirees or early retirees in their late 50s to mid-70s who have a defined short-term cash deployment window, are comparing it to CDs or Treasuries, and want the tax-deferral wrapper without committing to a longer annuity term. It works for both qualified and non-qualified money, with non-qualified accounts getting the more obvious tax-deferral benefit. It is not a fit for anyone who might need access to more than 10% of the value in any given year before the three-year period ends.

A MYGA — multi-year guaranteed annuity — is essentially a fixed-rate insurance contract. You deposit a lump sum, the insurer credits a guaranteed interest rate each year, and the money grows tax-deferred until you withdraw it. At the end of the surrender period, you have no exit penalty. That is it. No index exposure, no participation rates, no rider elections, no performance risk beyond the credit quality of the issuing insurance company. What you're buying is certainty: a known rate, a known timeline, and no surprises at maturity. The insurance wrapper adds the tax-deferral and the death-benefit features the spec describes.

The rate on SecureFore 3 is a declared fixed rate, locked at the time of purchase for the full three-year term. The brochure documents a current rate range of 3.90%–4.10% — the actual rate credited depends on purchase date and potentially premium tier. Because the rate is fully locked at purchase and does not reset annually, there is no reinvestment risk during the term. The rate compounds inside the contract, and no taxes are owed on that growth until you take a distribution. At the end of year three, the surrender charge drops to zero and you can withdraw, roll to a new contract, or annuitize without penalty. The guaranteed rate is the product; everything else is a supporting feature.

The nursing home waiver — formally the Terminal Illness Waiver and Nursing Home Waiver — is a meaningful secondary feature for a product in this age-eligibility range (issue ages through 85). If, after the first contract anniversary, you or a beneficiary requires nursing home confinement for at least 90 consecutive days, withdrawal charges are waived on amounts taken out from that point. Terminal illness similarly waives charges. For a product sold to buyers in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, the risk of needing liquidity for a medical event during a three-year window is real. The waiver addresses that risk without adding a rider fee, which makes it a genuine credit rather than a marketing bullet point.

You are trading three years of liquidity — above the 10% free withdrawal — for a locked rate. The surrender charges during the term are 8% in year one, 8% in year two, and 7% in year three. Those are steep enough that accessing a large chunk early would materially reduce your effective return. The free-withdrawal provision (10% of beginning-of-year contract value, available after the first contract year) covers most routine needs like interest harvesting or modest income draws, and RMDs can also be taken without triggering surrender charges if the contract is held in a qualified account.

The spec notes there is no Market Value Adjustment (MVA) on this product. That is a clean feature: your surrender penalty is always exactly the stated surrender charge — no additional interest-rate-driven penalty stacking on top of it. That makes the exit math simple and predictable if you do need to access funds early.

There are no base contract fees, no rider fees, and no spread on the fixed rate. What you see in the guaranteed rate is what you get. The only cost embedded in the structure is the surrender charge schedule during the three-year term, which is the insurer's economic protection against early contract exits. Because there is no income rider and no index crediting, there is nothing to unpack in terms of fee-for-feature tradeoffs — the product is intentionally simple. The tradeoff is structural: you exchange liquidity during the term for rate certainty, and the surrender schedule enforces that exchange.

Legal Entity: Forethought Life Insurance Company

Parent: Global Atlantic Financial Group