Summit Focus 3 review

It depends on what you're after. For a buyer who wants a short FIA commitment, principal protection, and index-linked growth potential without paying for income riders, this is a reasonable choice. The three-year term is a genuine plus. What gives me some pause is the 3% annual strategy fee on the enhanced options — for a three-year product, that fee can consume a meaningful share of the credited interest. If you're drawn to this product because of the higher caps on the enhanced strategies, do the math carefully before selecting those options.

The practical reason to buy Summit Focus 3 is a short-term safe-harbor for money that needs principal protection and some growth potential. Three years is short enough that many buyers feel comfortable committing. Midland National's A+ A.M. Best rating also matters for buyers who want financial strength behind a guarantee. The dual-track crediting menu means someone who wants a more conservative approach can stay with the standard options and avoid any strategy fee entirely.

I think Summit Focus 3 is best suited for someone in their mid-50s or older, working with qualified or non-qualified money that they want protected for roughly three years before a planned rollover or retirement transition. It works well for someone who doesn't need income rider features and wants a clean principal-protection structure. It is less appealing for someone who needs more than 5% liquidity in any given year, expects to need full access before the three years are up, or wants a longer runway for accumulation that would justify a deeper strategy menu.

You're buying a short-term insurance contract that protects your principal from market downturns and credits interest based on index performance. You are not getting direct stock market exposure — gains are shaped by caps, participation rates, and the structure of the crediting method, not the raw index return. The three-year point-to-point design means your interest is measured once, at the end of each three-year crediting period, not on an annual reset basis. That distinction matters: a sharp market decline near the end of the crediting period can reduce credited interest even if the overall period showed positive performance.

All five crediting options on Summit Focus 3 use a three-year point-to-point design, meaning your starting and ending index values are compared at the end of each three-year period. You can choose from the S&P 500 Index or the BlackRock ESG US 5% Index ER, and for each index you can use either a standard cap-rate or participation-rate strategy (no fee) or an enhanced version with higher caps and participation rates (3% annual strategy fee). A three-year fixed rate account is also available.

The cap rates ranged from 22% to 34% as of the April 2026 rate sheet, depending on which strategy you choose. Participation rates ranged from 55% to 325% across strategies, with the higher numbers tied to the BlackRock ESG index. Those are the snapshot rates — they can change for new allocations.

The most meaningful secondary feature is the nursing home confinement waiver, which allows a full surrender charge-free and MVA-free withdrawal starting in contract year two if you're confined to a nursing home for 90 or more consecutive days. For a short-term product like this, that waiver adds real value: if a health event forces your hand before the three years are up, you're not stuck paying an 8% surrender charge on top of a difficult situation. The RMD accommodation is also worth noting — Midland National waives surrender charges and MVA on required minimum distributions that exceed the 5% free-withdrawal amount, which matters for IRA owners who are already in the distribution phase.

Three years sounds short, but it still requires a genuine commitment. The free-withdrawal provision is 5% of beginning-of-year accumulation value annually — lower than the 10% many FIAs offer. Amounts above that are subject to surrender charges, and an MVA (Market Value Adjustment) also applies, meaning your penalty can shift up or down depending on interest rate movement at the time of withdrawal. The combination of a below-average free-withdrawal allowance and an MVA makes unplanned withdrawals meaningfully more expensive than the surrender schedule alone suggests.

There is no base contract fee and no income rider fee — this product carries no mandatory ongoing charges. The only explicit fee is the 3% annual strategy fee on the enhanced cap and enhanced participation-rate crediting options for both indices. That fee is applied annually, which on a three-year product means it compounds across the full term. If you credit 10% over three years using an enhanced option, the cumulative fee drag eats into that meaningfully. The standard options carry no fee and are the cleaner choice for most buyers unless the enhanced rate differential is large enough to still justify the cost after the fee.

The structural tradeoffs are also worth naming. All crediting uses a three-year point-to-point measurement, so if the index drops in year three after rising in years one and two, you may receive less interest than an annual-reset product would have captured. And the 5% free-withdrawal provision is conservative relative to the category.

Legal Entity: Midland National Life Insurance Company

Parent: Sammons Financial Group

A.M. Best Rating: A+