Ultra Advantage 5-Year review

Yes, for the right buyer. This is a solid five-year accumulation FIA for someone who wants principal protection with real upside potential and doesn't want to pay a base contract fee to get it. It's a weaker fit for someone shopping specifically for guaranteed lifetime income through a rider, since this version doesn't offer one, or for someone who's likely to need more than the free-withdrawal amount in the first two contract years.

The core appeal is accumulation with downside protection at a low entry point. A $10,000 minimum premium is well below what many FIAs require, and the absence of any sales, administrative, or M&E fee means the entire crediting rate goes toward what the contract actually earns rather than being eroded by a fee drag. The five-strategy menu also gives a buyer real choice: someone who wants certainty can lock a 7.75% cap for the full five-year term at issue, while someone comfortable with more variability can chase the uncapped 55% participation strategy or the 180% BofA U.S. Agility Index strategy.

I think this is best for someone in their 50s through 70s who wants a shorter FIA commitment than a 7- or 10-year contract, has non-qualified or qualified money they don't need in the next five years, and values the extended list of surrender-charge waivers as real protection against a life event forcing an early exit. It's a poor match for someone who wants guaranteed lifetime income now, needs regular access to more than 10-25% of the account value, or is uncomfortable with an all-index-linked crediting design that carries a 0% floor rather than a guaranteed minimum interest credit every year.

You're not buying the S&P 500 or the BofA U.S. Agility Index directly. You're buying a principal-protected contract that credits interest based on how those indices perform, filtered through a cap, a participation rate, or a performance-trigger rule depending on which strategy you allocate to. Every indexed strategy here has a 0% floor, meaning a bad index year credits nothing rather than losing money, but it also means there's no guaranteed positive credit in years the index is flat or negative — for that, the fixed account (currently 3.90%) is the only strategy with a stated positive floor above zero.

The contract offers five indexed strategies plus a fixed account, reallocated annually except where noted. Two strategies track the S&P 500 with an annual point-to-point cap: one at a 10.00% current cap with 100% participation, and a second where the 7.75% cap is guaranteed not to move for the entire five-year surrender term — a meaningful feature for someone who wants certainty about the ceiling rather than a rate that can be reset lower each year. A third S&P 500 strategy drops the cap entirely in exchange for a lower 55% participation rate. A fourth strategy tracks the BofA U.S. Agility Index, a volatility-controlled index, uncapped, at a current 180% participation rate. A fifth is a performance-trigger strategy that credits a flat 7.00% whenever the S&P 500 finishes flat or positive for the year, regardless of the magnitude of the gain.

The surrender-charge waiver package is the second-most important thing about this contract, and it's more generous than what most 5-year FIAs disclose. Beyond the standard free-withdrawal allowance, the contract fully waives both the surrender charge and the MVA — not just a portion of it — on hospital or long-term-care confinement of 30+ days, unemployment after 60+ days of benefits, disability lasting 90+ continuous days (ending at age 65), a terminal illness diagnosis, the death of a spouse (up to 50% of accumulation value) or a minor dependent (up to 25%), damage to a primary residence of $50,000 or more, and transplant surgery as either donor or recipient. These are contractual waiver triggers, not a chronic-illness income rider, so they don't generate ongoing income — they simply let you exit without penalty if one of these events happens.

The free-withdrawal allowance is genuinely competitive: 10% of premiums paid in year one, then 10% of the prior anniversary value each year after, cumulative up to a 25% ceiling — more generous than the flat annual 10% many peer contracts offer with no carryover. Above that allowance, the surrender schedule below applies, and it's front-loaded: both year one and year two are charged at the same 9% rate before stepping down. That's a real difference from FIAs that ease into their surrender schedule gradually — an early exit in year one or two here costs the same either way. An MVA also applies to withdrawals subject to a surrender charge, which means the penalty can move up or down with interest rate changes at the time of withdrawal, on top of the stated surrender percentage.

There's no sales fee, no administrative fee, no M&E charge, and no annual contract fee disclosed anywhere in the source materials — the entire cost of this contract shows up in the caps, participation rates, and trigger rate rather than as a line-item deduction. That's a genuine advantage over fee-bearing designs, but it comes with the usual FIA tradeoff: upside is capped, participation-limited, or trigger-limited rather than a full pass-through of index gains, and the fixed account and guaranteed minimums (0.05% for most strategies, 1% for the uncapped participation and trigger strategies) sit near the contractual floor if index performance and future rate resets both disappoint. United of Omaha also sells a Return of Premium (ROP) version of this same 5-year product. Based on the sibling ROP product's spec sheet, choosing that rider trades this base contract's higher current rates (10.00% cap, 55% uncapped participation, 180% BofA Agility participation, 7.00% trigger, 3.90% fixed) for lower ones (9.50% cap, 50% uncapped participation, 170% BofA Agility participation, 6.75% trigger, 3.65% fixed) in exchange for a full return-of-premium guarantee on top of the base contract's standard 87.5%-of-premium MGSV floor. In other words, the base version reviewed here is the higher-rate, lower-guarantee side of that pair — someone who wants the extra principal guarantee gives up roughly a quarter to half a point of yield across every strategy to get it, and also narrows their issue-age eligibility from 0-85 down to 0-80.

Legal Entity: United of Omaha Life Insurance Company

Parent: Mutual of Omaha

A.M. Best Rating: A+