Heritage Premier Plus 5 review

Yes, with a caveat. As a standalone 5-year MYGA, it's a reasonable, unremarkable product: a guaranteed rate, a manageable surrender schedule for its category, an A- rated carrier, and a free surrender-charge waiver for chronic-illness events. The caveat is that Liberty Bankers sells a nearly identical product — Heritage Premier 5 — right alongside it, and that sibling delivers essentially the same total return with a slightly gentler surrender schedule and none of the rate-structure complexity. I think Premier Plus 5 is good on its own merits, but it's hard to call it the better choice once you put the two side by side.

The obvious pull is the 6.15% number on the illustration. For a shopper comparing rate sheets across carriers, a first-year rate in the mid-6s reads as materially better than a flat mid-5s rate, even though — as the math below shows — it isn't. Someone might also prefer Premier Plus 5 if they specifically want more interest credited sooner rather than later, for example to fund a near-term withdrawal of interest-only earnings once the 30-day free-withdrawal window opens, since the year-one rate is genuinely higher in that first year even if the five-year total washes out.

I think this product is best for someone who has already decided they want a Liberty Bankers 5-year MYGA, is comfortable committing $10,000 or more for the full five-year term, and either doesn't mind the marginally steeper early surrender charges or specifically wants the higher near-term interest credit. It's a weaker fit for a careful rate shopper doing side-by-side math, who would generally do just as well — and keep a slightly more forgiving surrender schedule — with the flat-rate Heritage Premier 5 instead.

You're buying a single-premium, fixed-rate annuity: hand Liberty Bankers a lump sum, and the company guarantees to credit interest on it for five years, with your principal protected from market risk the entire time. What makes Premier Plus 5 different from a standard MYGA is how the rate is delivered, not how much of it there is. The 6.15% figure is a base rate of 5.15% plus a 1.00% first-year interest rate bonus — explicitly not an account-value premium bonus, per the product materials — layered on top for year one only, after which the rate drops back to 5.15% for years two through five. It's a rate-timing feature, not a return-enhancement feature.

Run the numbers and the front-loaded structure becomes clear. On a $100,000 premium compounding annually, Heritage Premier Plus 5's 6.15%-then-5.15% schedule grows to roughly $129,770 by the end of year five. The flat-rate sibling, Heritage Premier 5, crediting a level 5.35% every year, grows to roughly $129,780 over the same five years — a difference of about $10 on $100,000, which is a rounding error, not an advantage. The two products are actuarially priced to land in almost exactly the same place; Premier Plus 5 just gets there by putting more interest in year one and less in years two through five, instead of spreading it evenly. If you surrender or annuitize before year five, the timing shift can matter at the margin, but it isn't a source of extra guaranteed value.

The more useful feature on this contract is the Health Waiver Benefits package, bundled in at no additional cost. If you're hospitalized in a nursing home, diagnosed with a terminal illness, become disabled, or need home health care, the waiver lets you withdraw up to 10% of accumulated value in year one (up to 50% in later years) without triggering the surrender charge or MVA that would otherwise apply. This is a surrender-charge waiver tied to a qualifying health event, not an income or payout rider, but it's a real safety valve for a five-year commitment — the kind of feature that matters more in practice than the headline rate does.

Outside of the Health Waiver triggers, liquidity here is limited to interest-only withdrawals after the first 30 days, subject to a $100 minimum — you can pull out what the contract has earned, but not principal, without cost. Anything beyond that during the five-year term runs into the surrender charge and a market value adjustment (MVA), which can move the surrender value up or down with prevailing interest rates. Premier Plus 5's schedule — 8.2%, 7.2%, 6.2%, 5.2%, 4.6% across years one through five — is a notch steeper than the flat-rate sibling's 8.1%, 7.1%, 6.1%, 5.1%, 4.6% in every year except the last, where they're identical. It's a small gap, a tenth of a point per year, but it's a real cost with no offsetting return benefit, since the two products net out to roughly the same total interest.

There's no disclosed base contract fee, M&E charge, or administration fee on this product — typical for a MYGA, where the "cost" shows up in the surrender schedule and MVA exposure rather than an explicit line-item charge. The minimum guaranteed surrender value floor is 0.15%, which sets a hard bottom on what the contract can ever credit even in a bad rate environment — low, but standard for this product category. The real tradeoff to weigh isn't a fee at all; it's the 0.1-point-steeper surrender schedule in years one through four, taken on in exchange for a rate structure that, once compounded out, doesn't beat the flat-rate alternative Liberty Bankers sells under the same roof.

Legal Entity: Liberty Bankers Life Insurance Company

Parent: Liberty Bankers Insurance Group

A.M. Best Rating: A-