Preferred Choice 5 review

Depends on when you're reading this. Structurally, yes — a single-rate MYGA with no banding, no MVA, and a 15% free-withdrawal allowance is about as clean as this category gets, and the 4.70% rate in the source materials was competitive for a 5-year term. But that rate is drawn from a snapshot roughly 9.5 months old, so the honest answer is: this is a good annuity design, but you cannot know if it's still a good annuity offer until you confirm the current rate directly with Manhattan Life or an agent. Don't shop this off the number in this review.

The rational buyer here wants a fixed, known return for a fixed period without paying for features they won't use. No income rider means no rider fee eating into the credited rate. No banding means the rate doesn't depend on writing a bigger check — a $10,000 buyer gets the same rate as a $500,000 buyer. No MVA means the surrender charge is the only penalty for early access, with no additional interest-rate-driven adjustment layered on top. For someone parking money for exactly five years who wants CD-like predictability with tax deferral, this checks the boxes.

This fits savers, often near or in retirement, with non-qualified or IRA money they can commit for five years and no need for lifetime income guarantees. It suits people who've already decided they want a fixed-rate product (as opposed to indexed or variable) and are comparing MYGAs against each other or against CDs. It is a weaker fit for anyone who might need the money before year five beyond the 15% annual allowance, anyone who wants a guaranteed income stream built in, and anyone who specifically wants a no-lose return-of-premium guarantee if life circumstances force an early exit — that buyer should look at the sibling Premium Preferred 5 instead.

Strip away the brochure language and this is a savings account with a five-year lock and a tax-deferral wrapper. You deposit a lump sum, Manhattan Life credits a declared interest rate (4.70% per the source snapshot) for the full five-year term, and your money grows without annual 1099 tax reporting until you withdraw it. There's no index participation, no market exposure, and no upside beyond the stated rate — this is not a growth vehicle in the equity sense. The tradeoff for that certainty is the surrender schedule: access beyond the free-withdrawal amount costs you a declining penalty starting at 8% in year one.

The core mechanic is the simplest one in the MYGA category: a single fixed rate, credited annually, guaranteed for the entire 5-year surrender period. Unlike many MYGAs from larger carriers, Preferred Choice 5 carries no rate banding — Wink's own product profile lists "No Banding," meaning the current declared rate applies uniformly whether you fund it with $10,000 or $1,000,000. That's a genuine simplicity advantage over products that quietly pay smaller depositors a worse rate. What it is not is a permanent guarantee: the 4.70% figure is the current declared rate as of the snapshot date, not a rate baked into the contract form for all future buyers. Only the contractual minimum guaranteed surrender value floor — 1.00% annually in years six and beyond — is a permanent promise.

The secondary feature worth flagging is the 15% annual free withdrawal, available starting in the first contract year and paid via EFT. That's meaningfully more generous than the 10% figure common across the MYGA category, and it starts immediately rather than after a one-year wait. In practice, that gives a buyer more breathing room to take required minimum distributions or handle an unplanned need without triggering the surrender schedule, even though this product carries no formal RMD-friendly language in its own materials. It doesn't turn this into a liquid account, but it softens the multi-year commitment somewhat compared to stingier peers.

You're trading five years of full liquidity for a locked rate. Withdrawals above the 15% annual free amount are subject to a declining surrender charge — 8% in year one, stepping down to 7%, 6%, 5%, and 4% by year five, then falling away entirely once the term ends. Because there's no market value adjustment on this product, that surrender charge is the whole penalty; you won't see an additional interest-rate-driven haircut on top of it, which is a real advantage over MVA-bearing competitors when rates have moved against you. There's no confinement or terminal-illness waiver documented in the materials reviewed, so unlike some peer MYGAs, there's no contractual escape hatch for a health emergency beyond the standard free-withdrawal allowance and the death benefit.

There are no explicit fees here in the traditional sense — no set-up charges, no administrative expense deducted from premium, and obviously no rider fee since there's no income rider to attach one to. The real cost is opportunity cost and structural: this product's guaranteed floor beyond the initial five-year rate period is only the statutory 1.00% minimum, not the 100%-of-premium return-of-premium guarantee that Manhattan Life's own sibling product, Premium Preferred 5, offers explicitly. That sibling pays a lower current rate (3.75% versus 4.70%, per the same snapshot) specifically in exchange for that no-charge protection. Buying Preferred Choice 5 means accepting the standard statutory floor and giving up that added guarantee in exchange for the higher headline rate.

Legal Entity: The Manhattan Life Insurance Company

Parent: ManhattanLife Group

A.M. Best Rating: B++