Why it earned this rating
Our assessment
Ultra Premier 5-Year earns a solid-to-good rating because its 5.00% rate is genuinely competitive for a 5-year MYGA, guaranteed for the entire term with no bonus gimmick to unwind later. What holds it out of the top tier is the surrender schedule -- 9% in years one and two is steeper than many 5-year peers -- combined with a $25,000 minimum that puts it out of reach for smaller savers, and an MGSV floor set at the low end of what state law allows rather than an enhanced guarantee.
The short version
This is a straightforward 5-year, fixed-rate annuity for someone who wants to lock in a known return and is comfortable leaving the money alone for the full term. United of Omaha (Mutual of Omaha's annuity-issuing subsidiary) guarantees 5.00% for all five years — no teaser-then-reset structure, no index math, no rider fees. The rate is the headline feature, and it is a genuinely competitive one. The tradeoff is that early withdrawals above the free amount are expensive, especially in years one and two, and the $25,000 minimum premium screens out anyone shopping with a smaller nest egg.
Key facts
The full review
Is Mutual of Omaha Ultra Premier 5-Year a Good Annuity?
Yes, for the specific buyer it's built for. If you have $25,000 or more that you don't need for five years and you want a guaranteed rate without any market exposure or moving parts, this is a competitive option. It's a weaker fit if you might need meaningful access to principal in the first two years, since that's when the surrender charge is highest, or if you're working with less than $25,000, since the minimum premium rules the product out entirely.
Why Someone Would Buy This Annuity
The rational case for Ultra Premier 5-Year is simple: 5.00% guaranteed for five years is a strong rate in the current MYGA market, and it's locked at issue rather than subject to renewal risk during the term. Someone rolling over a maturing CD or MYGA, or repositioning a portion of a fixed-income allocation, gets a known number to plan around. The lack of an income rider or index crediting also means there's nothing to evaluate beyond the rate itself — no roll-up assumptions, no cap or participation rate to model.
Who This Annuity Is Best For
This fits savers roughly 50 and older with at least $25,000 in investable assets — non-qualified money or an IRA rollover both work, since issue ages run 0-89 and the product is RMD-friendly. It's best for someone who has already priced out CDs and other MYGAs and is comparing rates, not someone who needs the flexibility to pull money out in year one or two, and not someone under the minimum premium threshold.
What You're Really Buying Here
Strip away the brand name and this is a single-premium deferred annuity with one crediting method: a fixed interest rate declared at issue and guaranteed not to change for five years. You are not buying market exposure, an index strategy, or an income guarantee — you're buying a five-year interest-rate lock, similar in concept to a CD, wrapped in an insurance contract that offers tax-deferred growth and a handful of penalty-free withdrawal provisions for hardship events.
How the Core Feature Works
The core feature is the fixed rate itself: 5.00%, guaranteed for the full five-year term, per Wink data pulled April 2026. There's no participation rate, cap, or spread to track because there's no index involved — the entire return is the stated rate, compounding annually inside the contract. At the end of the five-year guarantee period, the owner gets a 30-day penalty-free window to surrender or move the money elsewhere; absent that, the contract auto-renews into a new guarantee period (five-year or one-year, depending on what's available) at whatever new-money rate United of Omaha is offering at that time. That renewal rate is not locked in advance and could be materially lower than 5.00%.
Why the Secondary Feature Matters
The second feature worth understanding is the waiver package attached to the surrender charge. Beyond the standard 10% free withdrawal, United of Omaha waives surrender charges and MVA for a fairly broad list of hardship events — extended nursing home or hospital confinement (30+ days), total disability lasting 90+ days (though the waiver stops at age 65), terminal illness, death of a spouse or minor dependent, major damage to a primary residence, organ or transplant surgery, unemployment, and RMDs taken from a qualified plan. None of that changes the base surrender math, but it matters if the reason you'd need early access is a genuine emergency rather than a change of plans.
Liquidity and Surrender Schedule
You're trading five years of full liquidity for a locked 5.00% rate, and the trade is priced steeply in the early years: the surrender charge is 9% in both year one and year two before stepping down to 8%, 7%, and 6% in years three through five. That's a heavier early penalty than some 5-year MYGAs on the market, so this product rewards buyers who are confident they won't need the money in the first 24 months more than it rewards buyers who just want general five-year liquidity. The 10% annual free withdrawal (minimum $100 per month) softens that somewhat, and an MVA — Market Value Adjustment, meaning the surrender penalty can move up or down with interest rates — applies to withdrawals above the free amount on top of the stated surrender charge. RMDs attributable to the contract are treated as RMD-friendly, so IRA owners taking required distributions shouldn't trigger a surrender charge on those specific withdrawals.
| Contract Year | Surrender Charge |
|---|---|
| 1 | 9% |
| 2 | 9% |
| 3 | 8% |
| 4 | 7% |
| 5 | 6% |
Fees and Tradeoffs
There's no explicit rider fee here because there's no rider — no income benefit, no chronic illness enhancement. The cost structure is entirely embedded in the crediting rate and the surrender schedule rather than charged as a separate line item. The one soft cost worth naming is the minimum guaranteed surrender value: 87.5% of premium, growing at 1-3% (the exact rate is set within the state-mandated range, and the brochure doesn't specify where in that range this contract falls). That's the standard NAIC floor, not an enhanced guarantee — contrast that with the carrier's own Ultra Secure Plus 5-Year, which layers on an automatic, no-charge Return of Premium feature guaranteeing the surrender value never drops below premiums paid. Ultra Premier trades that extra floor for a materially higher locked rate (5.00% versus Ultra Secure Plus's 4.30%/4.45%) and a much higher minimum premium ($25,000 versus $5,000).
Product snapshot
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Product Type | Fixed Annuity |
| Surrender Period | 5 years |
| Issue Ages | 0-89 |
| Minimum Premium | $25,000 |
| Crediting Methods | Fixed |
| Free Withdrawal | 10% of accumulated policy value per year may be withdrawn without a withdrawal charge or Market Value Adjustment ($100 minimum per month). |
| MGSV | 87.5% of premium at 1-3% |
| Death Benefit | Full Account Value |
| Income Rider | Not available |
| Premium Bonus | None |
| Availability | Not approved in Montana or New York; a state-variation policy form is approved in California. |
Carrier snapshot
Legal Entity: United of Omaha Life Insurance Company
Parent: Mutual of Omaha
A.M. Best Rating: A+
Final take
Ultra Premier 5-Year does one thing and does it well: it locks a competitive 5.00% rate for five years with no rider complexity to evaluate. That's a legitimate reason to consider it if you're rate-shopping five-year MYGAs and have $25,000 or more to commit. Where it asks more of the buyer is the surrender schedule — 9% in the first two years is steep — and the fact that the floor underneath the rate is the standard MGSV, not an enhanced guarantee. If early access matters more to you than an extra half point or more of yield, the carrier's own Ultra Secure Plus 5-Year is worth comparing directly: gentler surrender charges, a built-in return-of-premium guarantee, and a $5,000 minimum, at a lower locked rate. This is the product for the buyer who has already decided liquidity isn't the priority.