Heritage Premier 9 review

It depends almost entirely on time horizon. For someone comfortable locking money away for nine years, this is a reasonably good annuity: the rate is flat and guaranteed for the whole term, the carrier carries an A- rating, and the structure doesn't hide anything in a first-year number that quietly resets lower. For someone who isn't certain they'll leave the money alone for close to a decade, it's a weaker fit — the surrender schedule is long relative to most of the MYGA market, and the free-withdrawal feature only frees up interest, not principal.

The rational buyer here wants a guaranteed rate they can set and forget without re-checking the fine print every year. Heritage Premier 9 delivers that: 5.45% credited annually for all nine years, per the current rate sheet, with no step-down after an initial bonus period. Someone laddering long-duration fixed income, replacing a maturing CD they don't plan to touch, or wanting a known, contractually guaranteed number for retirement-date planning nine years out is the natural audience. The health waivers also give some cover if a nursing home stay or terminal diagnosis forces early access.

I think this product is best for savers in their 50s to mid-70s who have already built emergency liquidity elsewhere and are allocating a slice of long-term, non-qualified or qualified savings toward a guaranteed-rate holding they don't intend to touch for the full term. It's a reasonable fit for both non-qualified money and IRA/Roth/SEP dollars where the product is approved for qualified use (Colorado, Maine, South Dakota, and Wyoming, per the carrier's materials). It's a poor fit for anyone under 50 without a very specific reason to lock in a rate that far out, and a poor fit for California and New York residents, where the product isn't approved at all.

Strip away the branding and this is an insurance contract that pays a fixed, guaranteed interest rate for nine years in exchange for your premium being locked up, subject to surrender charges, for that same period. You're not buying market exposure, an income guarantee, or any kind of upside participation — you're buying certainty. The rate you see on the current sheet (5.45%) is what's credited every single year of the contract, not just the opening year, which is the main thing that separates a flat-rate MYGA like this one from products that front-load an attractive number and quietly step it down.

The crediting is as simple as MYGAs get: one declared fixed rate, currently 5.45%, guaranteed for the entire 9-year term. There's no cap, no participation rate, no index to track, and — notably — no first-year bonus rate that reverts to something lower in year two. That last point matters more than it sounds. Liberty Bankers also sells a near-identical sibling product, Heritage Premier Plus 9, which uses a 1.00% first-year interest rate bonus (5.35% base plus a 1.00% bump, for an effective 6.35% in year one only) that reverts to 5.35% for years two through nine. Averaged simply across the full nine-year term, Premier Plus works out to roughly 5.46% a year versus this product's flat 5.45% — essentially the same total return, delivered two different ways. Premier Plus also carries a slightly steeper surrender schedule in most years (8.2% year one versus 8.1% here, for example). In practice, the "Plus" branding buys a bigger headline number in year one and a marginally higher exit penalty, not meaningfully more total interest over the life of the contract. If you don't need the psychological win of a big first-year rate, the base Heritage Premier 9 gets you to nearly the same place with a simpler story and a touch less surrender exposure.

The health waiver benefits are the product's second-most-important feature, and they're standard-issue for the category but still worth understanding. If the owner is confined to a nursing home, diagnosed with a terminal illness, becomes disabled, or needs home health care, Liberty Bankers will waive surrender charges on a portion of the accumulated value — up to 10% in the first contract year and up to 50% thereafter. That's not full, unconditional access, but it's a meaningful safety valve for a product that otherwise asks for a long, firm commitment. It matters most for buyers whose biggest fear about a 9-year lock-up isn't market timing, it's a health event forcing early access to the money.

You're trading nine years of principal liquidity for a locked, flat rate — that's the fundamental exchange this product asks for. Surrender charges start at 8.1% in year one and step down through the term: 7.1%, 6.1%, 5.1%, 4.6%, 3.6%, 2.6%, 1.6%, and 0.6% in year nine. Notably, the schedule doesn't fully reach zero until after the ninth contract year — a full surrender taken inside year nine still carries a small charge. A market value adjustment (MVA) also applies, which means the surrender penalty on withdrawals above the free amount can move up or down with interest rates at the time of withdrawal, not just follow the stated percentage.

The one liquidity release valve during the term is the free-withdrawal feature, and it's narrower than what some MYGA buyers are used to: after the first 30 days, you can take systematic withdrawals of interest earned only, with a $100 minimum per withdrawal — not a percentage of the accumulated value the way some competing MYGAs (including Liberty Bankers' own Heritage Classic 9, per the underlying product materials) allow. The brochure materials don't specifically address RMD treatment for this product, so if you're funding this with qualified money and expect to take required minimum distributions, confirm directly with the carrier how those are handled against the surrender schedule.

There's no separate rider fee here because there's no optional rider — no income rider, no enhanced death benefit rider, nothing layered onto the base contract. The available materials don't disclose a base contract fee either, which is typical for a MYGA of this kind; the "cost" isn't an explicit line-item fee, it's structural: the rate the carrier can afford to guarantee reflects the fact that your money is locked up for nine years and the carrier bears the interest-rate risk in between.

The real tradeoff to weigh is the Minimum Guaranteed Surrender Value, or MGSV — the floor that protects you if the carrier's renewal rates ever fell. Here that floor is a 0.15% minimum guaranteed annual interest rate rather than a more common percent-of-premium nonforfeiture formula, and a percentage-of-premium MGSV wasn't disclosed in the materials available for this product. That's not unusual for the category, but it means the floor protecting you in a worst-case renewal scenario is thin — 0.15% is barely above nothing.

Legal Entity: Liberty Bankers Life Insurance Company

Parent: Liberty Bankers Insurance Group

AM Best Rating: A-