Elite Access Advisory II review

It depends on how you are being charged and why you are shopping. As a fee-based investment wrapper for someone working with an advisor on an asset-based fee, it is a genuinely clean, low-cost annuity: no surrender, no M&E, full liquidity, and a deep menu. As an annuity in the sense most people mean, with guaranteed income or protected principal, it is not a fit because it offers neither. The honest answer is that it is a good vehicle for a specific advisory client and the wrong product for anyone seeking guarantees.

The rational reason to buy Elite Access Advisory II is tax deferral on an actively managed, diversified portfolio held inside a fee-based advisory account. If you have already maxed out your IRA and workplace plan and would otherwise hold these investments in a taxable brokerage account, you can rebalance, take gains, and rotate across asset classes, including alternatives, without generating a yearly 1099. The advisory share class is the draw for clients who pay their planner a flat percentage fee and do not want a commission-loaded contract: the internal cost is low, there is no surrender lock-up, and the advisory fee can be drawn from the contract itself without triggering a taxable event. The wrapper is doing tax work, and the share class makes that work cheaper.

I think Elite Access Advisory II is best for an investment-minded client, generally in their 50s or early 60s, who already works with a fee-only or fee-based advisor, has filled their other tax-advantaged buckets, and wants tax-deferred access to a wide menu that includes alternatives. It suits non-qualified money far better than qualified money, because putting an already-tax-deferred IRA inside a tax-deferred annuity adds cost without adding the tax benefit. It is a poor fit for anyone who wants guaranteed lifetime income, principal protection, a commission-based relationship, or a simple product, since none of those describe this contract. Because it is sold through the advisory channel, it generally only makes sense if you are paying an advisory fee anyway.

Strip away the annuity label and you are buying a tax-deferred investment account designed to sit inside a fee-based advisory relationship. Your money goes into variable subaccounts, which are mutual-fund-like portfolios, and your account value rises and falls with those investments with no floor underneath it. There is no cap, no participation rate, and no index crediting formula, because nothing here is index-linked the way a fixed indexed annuity is. The insurance company is not guaranteeing your principal or your income. What it is providing is a low-cost tax-deferred container, full liquidity with no surrender penalty, a death benefit at least equal to your contract value, and the option to add guarantees later for an extra charge. The difference from the commission version is the price of the shell: instead of a roughly 1% annual M&E charge, the only contract-level cost is a flat $240 a year, and your advisor's asset-based fee is billed separately.

The core feature is the investment menu paired with the advisory share class. Elite Access Advisory II offers 115 variable subaccounts spanning equity, fixed income, and alternative asset classes, with net fund expenses ranging from 0.52% to 2.28% as of the April 28, 2025 figures. You can hold up to 99 subaccounts at once and make up to 25 transfers per contract year with no transfer fee, which supports an active rebalancing style. There are no fixed-account options in this version; it is built entirely around the subaccounts. The alternatives sleeve is what distinguishes this from a typical variable annuity, since non-correlated and tactical strategies are uncommon inside annuity menus and are the main thing tax deferral makes more valuable.

The share-class mechanics are the other half of the story. Because this is the I-share, advisory build, there is no M&E charge and no surrender schedule, so the contract is fully liquid from day one. Critically, advisory fee withdrawals of up to 1.25% of account value per policy year are not treated as taxable withdrawals and, if you elect the optional Principal Guard GMAB, do not reduce that rider's benefit base. That detail matters: it means your advisor can be paid out of the annuity without creating a tax event or eroding any guarantee you have added.

The optional benefits are where Elite Access Advisory II tries to bridge from pure investment account to something more annuity-like, and they matter mainly because they are optional and added cost. The Return of Premium death benefit (0.20% a year) guarantees heirs the greater of full account value or premiums paid, less a pro-rata adjustment for withdrawals, and is available through age 80 at election. EarningsMax (0.35% a year of daily net asset value) adds an earnings enhancement to the death benefit, up to 40% of contract earnings for ages 0-69 and 25% for ages 70-75, capped at 250% of remaining premiums, available through age 75 at issue. There is also an optional Principal Guard GMAB, a guaranteed minimum accumulation benefit on a 7-year (1.00% current) or 10-year (0.90% current) term, with a 3.00% maximum, for buyers who want a floor on their investment after holding it long enough. None of these are required, and each one you add raises your total cost, so the right move is to buy only the guarantees you will actually use.

Liquidity is the headline advantage of this share class. There is no surrender period and no surrender charge: all or any portion of the contract can be withdrawn at any time prior to the income date with no penalty and no percentage limit. There is also no market value adjustment to worry about, because there is no surrender schedule for one to apply to. That is materially more flexible than the commission version of Elite Access II, which carries a five-year surrender schedule and an MVA. The one mechanical caution is that if a withdrawal would leave less than $2,000 in the contract, it is treated as a full surrender.

The materials did not specifically detail RMD treatment for this version, which is a low-confidence area, so if you hold this in a qualified account, confirm how required distributions interact with the contract before relying on it. In practice, with no surrender charges the RMD question is far less consequential here than on a product with a withdrawal-charge schedule, since there is no penalty to navigate around.

This is where the advisory share class genuinely changes the math. The base contract charge is a flat $240 a year, billed as a $20 monthly charge and waived once your quarterly anniversary contract value reaches $250,000 or more. There is no mortality-and-expense charge, no product fee, and no administration charge, which is unusual and is the whole point of the I-share design. On a $250,000-plus account the contract effectively costs nothing at the wrapper level. The only other contract-level costs are subaccount fund expenses (a net 0.52% to 2.28% as of April 28, 2025) and a $25 transfer fee that applies only after you exceed 25 free transfers in a year.

The cost that does not show up inside the contract is the advisory fee. This product is built to be sold by an advisor who charges an asset-based fee, and that fee, which commonly runs around 1% a year, is layered on top of the subaccount expenses outside the annuity. So the comparison to the commission version is not free-versus-cheap; it is "flat $240 contract fee plus your advisory fee" versus "roughly 1% M&E and a surrender schedule, no separate advisory fee." For a client already paying an advisor, this share class is almost always the better-priced choice. For someone who is not in an advisory relationship, the commission version may be more appropriate, since you would not otherwise be paying the advisory fee that makes this one economical. The trade to weigh is the same as on any Elite Access contract: the wrapper, however cheaply priced, only pays off if tax deferral on tax-inefficient, actively traded assets beats holding them in a plain taxable account.

Legal Entity: Jackson National Life Insurance Company

Parent: Jackson National Group

A.M. Best Rating: A