WealthDefender 5 Bonus review

It depends on what you're weighing it against. If you're comparing it to other 5-year FIAs with premium bonuses, it holds up reasonably well — the death benefit terms are better than average, and the surrender schedule is short by industry standards. If you're comparing it to a plain 5-year FIA without a bonus, run the math both ways: bonus products often carry lower renewal caps than their no-bonus siblings, and that's true here too. I think it's a fair contract, not a standout one.

The obvious draw is the 8.50% bonus credited to the account value at issue, which immediately puts more principal to work than you deposited. The secondary draw is the death benefit design — beneficiaries get the full account value with no surrender charge, no market value adjustment, and no clawback of the bonus, which isn't universal among bonus products. Add a short 5-year commitment and a built-in chronic illness/nursing-home waiver, and this reads as a low-friction way to protect principal, add a bonus, and still get out in five years.

This fits someone in their 60s to late 70s who wants to move a chunk of savings — at least $25,000 — into something principal-protected, doesn't need lifetime income guarantees, and likes the idea of a bonus and a shorter surrender window than a 7-or-10-year FIA. It works reasonably well for both qualified and non-qualified money, and it's RMD-friendly for IRA holders. It is not a fit for anyone whose primary goal is guaranteed lifetime income — there's no rider for that here at all — or for anyone who lives in one of the states where it isn't approved.

Strip away the bonus marketing and this is a principal-protected fixed indexed annuity: your money isn't in the market, and you can't lose principal to index performance. What you're buying is a contract where interest is credited based on the performance of the S&P 500, the Nasdaq-100 Engle 10% Index, or the Barclays Tactical Growth Index, subject to caps and participation rates, plus a fixed-rate account option. The 8.50% bonus is added to your account value immediately, but it isn't fully yours until it vests — which happens gradually over the first five years, matching the surrender schedule.

The premium bonus works like this: Ibexis adds 8.50% of your premium to the account value at issue (6.50% for issue ages 76 and up), and that bonus vests annually across the first five contract years, becoming fully vested after year six. In practice, that means the bonus is credited upfront and compounds alongside your other interest, but if you surrender early, the unvested portion is forfeited along with any applicable surrender charge. Since the vesting period roughly tracks the 5-year surrender schedule, someone who holds the contract to term captures the full bonus without a separate, longer lock-in — which is a meaningfully better structure than bonus products that vest on a longer schedule than the surrender charge itself.

The death benefit here is worth calling out specifically. Beneficiaries receive the full account value — not a reduced surrender value — with no surrender charge, no MVA, and no recapture of the premium bonus. A surviving spouse can also continue the policy in their own name rather than being forced to cash out. That combination isn't guaranteed on every bonus FIA; some carriers claw back unvested bonus amounts at death or apply surrender charges to the death benefit. Ibexis doesn't do either here, which makes this a cleaner legacy-planning vehicle than the bonus positioning alone would suggest.

You can withdraw up to 10% of the account value per contract year after the first year without penalty, as long as at least $5,000 remains in the contract. Withdrawals beyond that free amount during the first five years trigger the surrender charge schedule below, and a market value adjustment (MVA) also applies — meaning the penalty can move up or down with interest rate changes at the time of withdrawal, not just follow the flat schedule. Required Minimum Distributions are treated as penalty-free withdrawals after year one, which matters if this is IRA money. The chronic illness waivers (activities-of-daily-living, nursing home/hospital confinement, terminal illness) can waive the surrender charge entirely after year one, but each has real qualifying conditions — 90+ consecutive days of confinement or ADL impairment, or a physician-certified terminal diagnosis — so don't treat them as a general-purpose liquidity release valve.

There's no separately disclosed rider fee here because there's no optional income rider to attach one to — the chronic illness and death benefit provisions are built in rather than fee-based add-ons. The real tradeoff is in the crediting terms themselves: the S&P 500 annual point-to-point cap runs 5.50%-6.50% as of the August 2025 rate sheet, and participation rates on the other strategies range 54%-100% depending on index and term. Those are moderate figures for a 5-year FIA with a bonus attached — the bonus is effectively funded, in part, by giving up some upside in the crediting formula. The 87.5%-of-premium MGSV floor at 0.15%-3% is standard and provides a hard backstop if index credits come in near zero for a stretch.

Legal Entity: Ibexis Life & Annuity Insurance Company

A.M. Best Rating: A-