Growth Annuity 10-Year review

Yes, for a specific kind of buyer — but it depends on how much weight you put on carrier strength. If you're comfortable with a B++ rated insurer and you value a wide index menu with disclosed guaranteed floors, this is a genuinely well-built accumulation FIA. If carrier financial strength is a hard requirement for you, or you want the simplest possible contract, this one asks you to do more homework than a plain-vanilla single-strategy FIA would.

The main reason to buy Growth Annuity 10-Year is the crediting menu itself — three different methods (annual point-to-point, biennial term end point, and a monthly-change strategy with a replacement-rate feature Nassau calls the Sunrise Adjustment) spread across 13 indexed accounts tied to the S&P 500, the Nasdaq-100, and Nassau's own Sunrise Smart Passage SG Index. The secondary reason is optionality on income: you don't have to decide at issue whether you want a rider, a fee-based rider, or no rider at all, and the guaranteed minimums (5% participation floor on 1-year strategies, 10% on 2-year strategies, a 0.75% floor on the sole cap strategy) are spelled out rather than left implicit.

I think this is best suited for someone in their 50s or 60s, with qualified or non-qualified retirement dollars they don't need for a decade, who wants principal protection but is willing to actively manage strategy allocations across a fairly large menu rather than set-and-forget a single crediting formula. It's a weaker fit for someone who wants the simplest possible FIA, needs more than 10% annual liquidity, or treats carrier financial strength as a non-negotiable screen above the B++ tier.

You are not buying stock market exposure. You're buying an insurance contract that protects your principal from direct market loss while crediting interest based on formulas tied to index performance. The "growth" in the name refers to the breadth of ways Nassau lets you pursue that interest — not to any guarantee of outsized returns. Strip away the brochure language and this is a principal-protected accumulation vehicle with a large menu of crediting options and a rider you can bolt on for income later if your plans change.

Growth Annuity 10-Year offers three crediting methods. Annual Point-to-Point measures index change over one year; it's the only strategy that uses a cap (10.00% on the S&P 500 version) rather than a participation rate. Biennial Term End Point measures change over two years, paid out at the end of the term, using a participation rate rather than a cap. Monthly Change with Replacement Rate — Nassau's Sunrise Adjustment — sums monthly index changes with a mechanism that replaces negative months, again crediting via participation rate. Across the 13 indexed accounts, participation rates on the standard, no-fee accounts run 38% to 172%; on the six Enhanced Participation Rate accounts, which carry a 1.00% annual strategy fee, participation rates run 47% to 212%. There's also a 1-year fixed account currently crediting 4.50%. All of this sits on top of guaranteed minimums that don't disappear in a bad rate environment: at least 5% participation on 1-year strategies, at least 10% on 2-year strategies, and a 0.75% floor on the cap strategy.

The optional income rider is the second-most-important feature, and Nassau gives you four versions to choose between at issue: Amplified Income Rider III and Amplified Income with Rising Income Opportunity Rider II carry no additional fee and credit 150% of the contract's net-of-fee growth to the income benefit base each year, for up to 15 years. Amplified Income Plus Rider III and Amplified Income Plus with Rising Income Opportunity Rider II add a fee — 0.95% of the income benefit base annually, rising to a maximum of 1.50% after the 15th contract anniversary — in exchange for a guaranteed 3.00% simple-interest roll-up stacked on top of the same performance-based growth. That's a real choice: pay nothing and take a purely performance-linked roll-up, or pay a rising fee for a guaranteed floor under that roll-up. Note that the income rider is only available with the 10-year surrender schedule (9-year in California) — the alternate 7-year schedule doesn't carry the option — and in Maryland the youngest covered person must be at least 50 to add a rider at all.

The core surrender schedule runs 12%, 12%, 12%, 11%, 10%, 9%, 8%, 7%, 6%, 4% across ten years, and a market value adjustment applies to withdrawals above the free amount — meaning your surrender penalty can move with interest rates, for better or worse, on top of the stated charge. You get 10% of account value free each year, and RMDs tied to this contract are also free of surrender charges, MVA, and rider fees, subject to some first-year restrictions, which makes this reasonably workable for qualified money. Nursing home and terminal illness waivers are available for issue ages 80 and under (nursing home waiver excluded in California), though the MVA still applies even to waived withdrawals — the waiver removes the surrender charge, not the market adjustment. Availability and terms shift by state: California uses a shorter, distinct surrender schedule under a separate liquidity group, and there's a separate 7-year schedule option in other states that trades the income rider for a shorter commitment. Either way, this is retirement money, not an emergency fund — the MVA in particular means a large withdrawal in a rising-rate environment could cost more than the surrender-charge table alone suggests.

There's no explicit base-contract fee. The costs here are opt-in. The 1.00% annual strategy fee on the six Enhanced Participation Rate accounts is deducted from account value at the end of each segment regardless of whether the index credit was positive, flat, or zero — you're paying for access to the higher participation rates whether or not they paid off that term. The income rider fee only applies if you choose one of the two Plus riders, and it's worth naming the trade directly: 0.95% of the income benefit base (rising to 1.50% after year 15) buys you a guaranteed 3.00% simple-interest roll-up layered on top of performance-based growth, rather than relying on index performance alone. Whether that's worth it depends on how much you value a guaranteed floor under your future income number versus keeping more of the upside for yourself. The biggest tradeoff outside of explicit fees is the carrier's B++ A.M. Best rating — lower than the A- floor this site otherwise treats as a baseline for recommended products, and a real consideration on a ten-year contract.

Legal Entity: Nassau Life and Annuity Company

Parent: Nassau Financial Group

A.M. Best Rating: B++