Premium Preferred 5 review

It depends on what the buyer is optimizing for. As a pure rate play, no — 3.75% (per the available snapshot) isn't competitive, and Manhattan Life's own Preferred Choice 5 pays nearly a point more for the same 5-year commitment. As an insurance product for someone who is anxious about ever seeing their account value drop below what they deposited, yes — the ROP floor is a real, contractually guaranteed feature, not marketing language, and it's active throughout the surrender period, which most MYGAs don't offer.

The rational buyer here isn't chasing yield. They're paying roughly 0.95% per year, relative to the sibling product, for something closer to an early-exit insurance policy: no matter when they surrender within the 5-year term, their payout (net of any withdrawals already taken) won't drop below the premium they put in. For someone deploying money they might need to touch — funds earmarked for a near-term but not fixed purchase, or simply someone who loses sleep over the idea that a surrender charge could eat into their own principal — that trade can make sense. It is not a product for someone whose only question is which MYGA pays the most.

I think this fits a conservative, risk-averse saver — likely near or in retirement, non-qualified or IRA funds either way — who has already decided they want the safety of a fixed annuity but is uneasy about the standard MYGA design, where early surrender can mean getting back less than was paid in. It's a poor fit for someone comfortable holding the full 5-year term regardless, since the statutory-floor sibling at 4.70% is the better deal at identical liquidity terms, and it's a poor fit for anyone who wants income features, since no rider is available on this product at all.

Strip away the branding, and this is a single-premium deferred annuity: deposit at least $10,000, Manhattan Life credits a declared fixed rate for 5 years, and at the end of the term you can renew, annuitize, or move the money. What makes this specific contract different is the guarantee sitting underneath the rate. Most MYGAs promise a Minimum Guaranteed Surrender Value around 87.5% of premium, growing at 1-3%, meaning a year-one cash-out could return less than was paid in. Premium Preferred 5 instead guarantees you'll never get back less than 100% of what you paid, minus withdrawals, at any point in the surrender period. Manhattan Life brands this the "Guaranteed Return of Premium" feature, and per the brochure it's included automatically at no separate charge and doesn't itself reduce the credited rate — but the declared rate is set noticeably lower than the sibling product that lacks this feature, which is where the real cost shows up.

The crediting mechanics are simple: the account value grows at the declared 3.75% fixed rate, compounded, for the 5-year term. This is a single-rate MYGA — the rate is set once at issue, with no separate first-year teaser bonus rolling into a lower renewal rate. Separately, Wink's product profile lists a 1.00% minimum guaranteed interest rate floor that applies to the renewal-rate mechanism after the initial term. There's no index participation, no cap, and no spread here — it's a straightforward fixed-rate contract, and the 3.75% figure is a snapshot rate, not a lifetime guarantee.

The Return-of-Premium floor is really the primary reason to look at this product over its own sibling, so it deserves the deeper explanation. On a standard MYGA, if a buyer surrenders in year one or two, the surrender value is the lesser of account value or the Minimum Guaranteed Surrender Value — and early in the term, that MGSV can genuinely sit below the premium paid, especially once a surrender charge is layered on top. Premium Preferred 5's ROP floor removes that specific risk: regardless of contract year or what the underlying math would otherwise produce, the buyer is guaranteed to receive back at least premium paid minus any prior withdrawals. Combined with the absence of an MVA — so the floor isn't also exposed to an interest-rate-driven adjustment — this is about as close to a hard principal guarantee as a MYGA can offer. For a buyer nervous about a B++-rated carrier's claims-paying strength, the floor doesn't substitute for carrier due diligence, but it does remove one specific fear: that exiting early could compound a carrier-strength concern with an actual principal loss.

The free-withdrawal side works like most 5-year MYGAs: 15% of account value can be withdrawn per calendar year starting in year one, at no separate charge, and Manhattan Life requires those withdrawals be set up via Electronic Fund Transfer. Above that 15%, the surrender charge schedule shown below applies as it would on any comparable product — but because of the ROP floor, whatever the surrender charge takes never pushes the total payout below what was originally deposited, net of withdrawals already taken. That's a meaningfully different risk profile than most MYGAs, where a surrender charge in the early years can take a buyer below their own principal. The materials in this corpus don't specify RMD treatment for this contract, so IRA holders taking required distributions should confirm directly with the carrier how RMDs interact with the free-withdrawal allowance.

There's no base contract fee — Manhattan Life states plainly that there are no set-up fees or administrative charges deducted from the single premium. There's also no separate charge for the Return-of-Premium floor itself. The real cost is opportunity cost, priced into the rate: at the same 9/29/2025 snapshot, Preferred Choice 5 — a nearly identical Manhattan Life product on the same surrender schedule, same issue ages, same minimum premium — paid 4.70% with only the standard statutory floor. That's a 0.95-percentage-point gap. On $100,000 over 5 years, that's several thousand dollars of forgone interest paid for the guarantee that the worst-case surrender outcome is "get back what was paid in" rather than "get back slightly less." Whether that trade is worth it is a personal risk-tolerance call, not a math problem with one right answer.

Legal Entity: The Manhattan Life Insurance Company

Parent: ManhattanLife Group

A.M. Best Rating: B++