Income Planning Annuity review

Yes, for the right buyer. This is a good annuity for someone who wants protected lifetime income, values principal protection, and likes the idea of a built-in income boost if a future health event limits their independence. It is less appealing for someone who wants short-term liquidity, the strongest possible accumulation terms, or a simpler contract without a rider fee.

The main reason to buy the Income Planning Annuity is to build future protected lifetime income while keeping principal protection in the meantime. The secondary reason is the chronic-illness feature. The LPA Multiplier can increase your lifetime withdrawal amount if you can no longer perform certain activities of daily living, which folds a measure of care-cost planning into the same product. For a buyer who wants both guaranteed income and some downside coverage for health events, that bundling has real appeal.

I think this annuity is best for someone in the pre-retirement or early-retirement window, roughly age 55 to 75, who wants to set aside long-term money to create future income and expects to defer withdrawals for several years. It fits buyers who want a built-in rider rather than relying on annuitization later, and who value having a care-need income boost as part of the contract. It is less attractive for someone who mainly wants growth, expects to need frequent access to principal above the 5% free amount, or wants the simplest possible annuity. Because the income guarantees are the point, this also makes more sense for qualified or non-qualified retirement dollars than for short-horizon savings.

You are not really buying stock market upside here. You are buying a lifetime income framework wrapped around a principal-protected annuity. The heart of the contract is the GLWB II rider: your premium helps establish a benefit base, and your age when you turn income on helps determine how much you can withdraw for life. The index strategies exist mainly to grow the underlying account value and, in turn, support those income guarantees. Treating this like an accumulation FIA misses the point. It is built to answer the question "how do I create income I can't outlive," with a secondary answer for "what if I need care later."

The Income Planning Annuity includes the Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefit II (GLWB II) as a built-in rider. Once you activate income, the rider lets you take a guaranteed lifetime payment that continues even if the underlying account value is eventually drawn down to zero. The amount you can take for life is generally driven by your benefit base and your age at activation, so deferring longer typically supports a higher lifetime payout. The available materials confirm the rider is built in and carries a 1.25% current fee, but they do not spell out a specific annual income-base roll-up percentage. If a roll-up is part of how the benefit base grows before activation, that is a key number to confirm on the current rate and rider sheet before buying, because it heavily influences how much future income you actually get.

The account value itself grows through a broad crediting menu that includes a fixed account and multiple index strategies tied to the S&P 500, two S&P 500 Low Volatility Daily Risk Control versions, the S&P Multi-Asset Risk Control 5% Excess Return Index, the Fidelity Multifactor Yield Index 5% ER, and the Nasdaq-100. Crediting methods range from annual point-to-point with a cap, participation rate, or index margin, to monthly point-to-point, daily average, two-year point-to-point, and an annual inverse performance trigger. That is a wider menu than many income-first FIAs offer.

The most meaningful secondary feature is the LPA Multiplier, short for Lifetime Payment Amount Multiplier. This is a chronic-illness enhancement that can increase your guaranteed lifetime withdrawal if you become unable to perform a certain number of activities of daily living, subject to the contract's eligibility rules and waiting periods. In plain English, it can boost your income at the exact moment care costs tend to rise. That matters because it adds a layer of protection most plain income annuities do not have, and it does so without requiring a separate long-term care policy. The tradeoff is that the multiplier only helps if you actually trigger it, and the qualifying conditions and any duration limits are defined by the contract, so the value of this feature depends entirely on those terms.

This annuity is built for long-term retirement dollars, not short-term cash needs. You can withdraw up to 5% of your initial premium penalty-free each contract year, starting in year one, which is more generous than products that make you wait until year two. Anything above that is subject to a 10-year surrender schedule, and a market value adjustment (MVA — a feature that can raise or lower your surrender cost depending on how interest rates have moved since you bought the contract) may also apply. Note that withdrawals reduce the benefit base dollar-for-dollar, so taking money out early directly shrinks your future income.

There is some relief built in. The contract is designed to be RMD-friendly, so required minimum distributions attributable to it can generally be taken without tripping surrender charges. The minimum guaranteed surrender value is 87.5% of premiums accumulated at 1-3%, which sets a floor on what you walk away with if you cash out. Even with those provisions, a 10-year surrender period is a long commitment, and this is not a contract to treat like emergency cash.

The headline fee is the income rider. The GLWB II costs 1.25% annually right now and is deducted from the account value, but the contract allows that fee to rise to a maximum of 3.00% over time. That ceiling is worth taking seriously: a rider fee that can more than double is a meaningful long-term drag, and you are paying it whether or not the markets cooperate. The trade is straightforward. The 1.25% buys you a guaranteed income stream you can't outlive plus the chronic-illness multiplier, and whether that's worth it depends on whether you actually turn income on and how long you live.

Beyond the rider fee, the tradeoffs are structural. Index growth is shaped by caps, participation rates, and margins rather than the full market return, and those terms exist to support the income guarantees first. The available rate materials are dated June 2022 and show a 5.00% annual cap with a 100% participation rate on at least one strategy, but these are low-confidence figures and almost certainly stale. Current caps and participation rates were effectively not available in the brochure, so if you're shopping this, ask for the current rate sheet directly.

Legal Entity: Midland National Life Insurance Company

Parent: Sammons Financial Group

A.M. Best Rating: A+