Perspective Advisory II review

It depends entirely on whether you want one of the optional guarantees. As a low-cost, no-surrender wrapper for tax-deferred investing inside an advisory relationship, it's a clean piece of plumbing. But a variable annuity with no living-benefit and no enhanced death-benefit is mostly just a more expensive, less flexible brokerage account with tax deferral attached. The product becomes genuinely useful when you add a Flex living-benefit rider for protected lifetime income or an enhanced death-benefit for legacy planning — and at that point you're paying for those features, not the wrapper.

The rational reason an advisory client picks this is tax-deferred growth across a very deep investment menu, with the option to bolt on a lifetime-income or death-benefit guarantee — all without a surrender period locking up the money. Because it's a fee-based contract, there's no upfront commission baked in, so the insurance cost is low and the advisor is compensated through the separate advisory fee instead. For someone who has already maxed out qualified accounts and wants another tax-deferred sleeve with the option of converting it to guaranteed income later, the structure is logical. The no-surrender design also means you're not penalized for changing your mind.

I think this is best for a client already working with a fee-only or fee-based advisor, typically in the pre-retirement or early-retirement window, who wants tax-deferred market exposure and is seriously considering a living-benefit or enhanced death-benefit rider. It fits non-qualified money especially well, since the tax deferral is doing real work there. It's less attractive for someone in a qualified account who gains no extra tax benefit from the wrapper, for anyone who just wants index exposure without a guarantee, or for a self-directed investor with no advisor — the contract is built around the advisory relationship and the optional riders, and stripped of both it doesn't have a clear job.

Strip away the brochure framing and this is a tax-deferred container for mutual-fund-style investments, plus an optional insurance guarantee you can attach to it. The 109 variable subaccounts are essentially professionally managed portfolios across stocks, bonds, and allocation strategies; your account value rises and falls with them, with no cap and no floor unless you add a rider. The "annuity" part is mostly the tax treatment and the optional guarantees. In the advisory version, Jackson keeps its own cost low — a 0.45% insurance charge instead of the roughly 1.3% you'd see on the commission-paying share class — because your advisor is paid separately through an advisory fee deducted from the account. So you're buying tax deferral, an investment menu, and the right to add a guarantee, in a low-internal-cost package designed for fee-based advice.

The engine of the contract is the subaccount lineup: 109 variable investment options plus a one-year fixed account. You allocate premium across them, and your contract value tracks their performance directly — there's no index crediting, no participation rate, and no cap. Net subaccount expenses run roughly 0.09% to 2.00% depending on the funds you choose, layered on top of the 0.45% insurance charge. The fixed account offers a guaranteed period with a current minimum rate of 2.40% (the contractual floor is set between 1% and 3% based on a five-year Treasury reference), and dollar-cost-averaging programs are available at 2.40% for six- or twelve-month windows. You get 25 free transfers among options each year, which is generous and supports active rebalancing inside the tax-deferred wrapper. Because there's no surrender period, the M&E charge is the only contract-level cost on the base wrapper, and it even steps down to 0.40% once your account value crosses $1 million on a quarterly anniversary.

The optional living-benefit and death-benefit riders are what give the wrapper a purpose, so they matter more here than in most reviews. Jackson's Flex Suite of living benefits (Flex Net Value IV, Flex Strategic Income V, Flex Value IV, Flex Core VIII, Flex Net Core VII, Flex Plus VII, plus MarketGuard Stretch and AutoGuard 5 II) turns the contract into a protected lifetime-income vehicle. Most Flex riders apply a 5% simple annual roll-up to the benefit base for up to ten years if you take no withdrawals, with Flex Core VIII using a 6% roll-up; several also add a 5% (or 6% for Flex Core VIII) annual benefit-base bonus on no-withdrawal years. Note that these roll-ups and bonuses grow the benefit base — the figure used to calculate guaranteed income — not your actual account value, which is a common point of confusion. On the death-benefit side, you can add Highest Quarterly Anniversary Value, Return of Premium, a Roll-up benefit, or a combination, each for an extra charge. These riders are the reason to choose this wrapper over a brokerage account, but each one carries its own fee on top of the base contract.

Liquidity is the standout feature of the advisory version. There is no surrender-charge schedule and no market value adjustment — you can withdraw all or any part of the contract at any time before the income date without a penalty from the insurer. That's a meaningful difference from the commission share class, which locks money up for years. Two practical notes apply. First, on a contract without a guaranteed-withdrawal rider, if a withdrawal leaves less than $2,000 of contract value, it's treated as a full surrender. Second, if you add a living-benefit rider, withdrawals reduce the benefit base dollar-for-dollar up to the guaranteed annual amount, and any excess withdrawal reduces it pro rata — so taking money out can shrink the very guarantee you paid for. RMDs are accommodated, but you must tell Jackson a withdrawal is an RMD, and 72(t)/72(q) substantially-equal distributions may not work cleanly on a contract with a living benefit. Beyond surrender, the only friction is a $35 annual maintenance charge (waived at $50,000 or more) and a $25 fee per transfer after the first 25 each year.

The base wrapper is cheap for a VA: a 0.45% mortality-and-expense charge (dropping to 0.40% above $1 million), no administration charge, and the small $35 maintenance fee that most contracts will have waived. But the headline number doesn't tell the whole story, and there are two layers to watch. First, the subaccounts themselves carry net fund expenses of roughly 0.09% to 2.00%, so your true all-in investment cost depends heavily on which portfolios you pick. Second — and this is the trade unique to the advisory channel — your advisor's fee is charged separately on top of the contract. The low 0.45% insurance cost exists precisely because the advisory fee replaces the commission, so the real comparison isn't 0.45% versus a commission VA's ~1.3%, it's 0.45% plus your advisory fee versus that ~1.3%. Then the riders: living benefits run 0.30% to 1.75% on the benefit base (MarketGuard Stretch 1.10%, AutoGuard 5 II 0.85%), and enhanced death benefits run 0.20% to 1.25%, all deducted quarterly. The trade is straightforward — the wrapper is cheap, but the guarantees that make it worth owning are not, and you should price the specific rider you intend to use rather than anchoring on the 0.45% base charge.

Legal Entity: Jackson National Life Insurance Company

Parent: Jackson Financial Inc.

AM Best Rating: A