Personal Protection Choice review

It depends on why you're buying. For someone who wants one contract that can flex across income, care, and legacy needs and is comfortable with a 10-year commitment, it's a reasonable fit. It's a weaker choice for someone who mainly wants top-of-market accumulation, values a top-tier carrier rating, or might need liquidity above the 10% free amount during the surrender period.

The rational reason to buy Personal Protection Choice is optionality. Rather than committing at issue to a pure accumulation FIA or a pure income annuity, you get a base contract plus a rider menu you can assemble to match your situation — lifetime income if you need a paycheck, a care benefit if long-term-care risk worries you, a family death benefit if legacy is the priority, or a combination. For a buyer whose retirement plan is still taking shape, that ability to keep doors open in a single principal-protected wrapper is the draw.

I think this is best for someone in the pre-retirement or early-retirement window, roughly age 55 to 70, who wants principal protection plus the ability to add guaranteed income or care and legacy protection later. It suits a buyer using long-term qualified or non-qualified money they won't need to touch beyond the 10% free withdrawal. It is less attractive for younger accumulators chasing the highest possible caps, for anyone who wants a short surrender window, or for a buyer who insists on an A-rated or better carrier.

Strip away the "protection choice" branding and you're buying two things stacked together. The first is a plain fixed indexed annuity: your principal is protected, and your interest is tied to index performance through caps, participation rates, or spreads rather than direct market ownership. The second — and the reason for the product's name — is an optional rider you bolt on for a fee. That rider is where the income roll-ups, the chronic-illness benefit, and the enhanced death benefit live. If you never elect the rider, this is simply a 10-year FIA. If you do, you're paying an annual charge to convert it into a hybrid income-and-protection contract.

The core of the contract is the indexed crediting menu — 16 indexed accounts spread across the Nasdaq-100, S&P 500, Sunrise Smart Passage SG, and UBS Tactical Multi Asset Index, using cap-rate, participation-rate, and spread-rate methods, plus a 1-year fixed account. Rates are set at the start of each segment and locked for that segment's term, then reset for future segments. Several accounts come in an "enhanced participation rate" version that charges a 1.00% annual strategy fee in exchange for a higher participation rate; because that fee is charged whether or not the index rises, an enhanced account's value can decline in a flat or down year. One important caveat: the current caps, participation rates, and spreads were not disclosed in the available materials. That's unusual for an FIA, and it means you can't evaluate the accumulation potential from the brochure alone — ask for the current rate sheet before committing.

The optional Income, Care and Family Protection Rider is the feature that defines this product. It's sold as combination riders — Income & Care, Income & Family, or Income, Care & Family — so you choose which protections to bundle. The income side offers two roll-up strategies on the benefit base: "Income Strategy Today," a 3% simple-interest roll-up in years three through ten after an upfront benefit-base bonus (30% if you start income in year one, 37.5% in year two, or 45% in year three), and "Income Strategy Tomorrow," a 14% simple-interest roll-up every year for ten years until you turn income on. A restart option lets you reset the roll-up (new rate guaranteed at least 3%) if you haven't yet exercised the rider. The Care Protection piece adds a chronic-illness benefit, and the Family Protection piece adds an enhanced death benefit on a separate rolled-up death benefit base. It's a genuinely deep menu — the tradeoff is that the roll-ups are benefit-base figures used to calculate future income, not your actual account value, which is a distinction every buyer should be clear on.

This is a long-term commitment, not accessible cash. Each year you can withdraw up to 10% of contract value penalty-free, but anything above that during the surrender period triggers a surrender charge, a market value adjustment (MVA — an interest-rate-sensitive adjustment that can move your surrender value up or down), and pro-rated rider and strategy fees. The schedule runs a full 10 years and starts high — 12% in each of the first three years before stepping down to 4% in year ten — so an early exit is expensive. There is real relief on required minimum distributions: RMDs associated with this contract are not subject to surrender charges or MVA. Note that withdrawals taken before you exercise the rider reduce the income benefit base (and the Family Protection death benefit base, if elected), though they don't stop the simple-interest roll-up. Surrender schedules and the guaranteed-value rate also vary by state, so confirm your state's specifics.

The main fee only applies if you elect the combination rider: 0.95% of the income benefit base annually for Income & Care Protection, or 1.15% for Income & Family or the full Income, Care and Family combination, deducted from contract value. That fee can rise to a maximum of 1.50% if you restart the roll-up. The trade is straightforward — you pay roughly 1% a year to secure a guaranteed income base that rolls up at 3% or 14% simple interest, and whether that's worth it depends entirely on whether you actually turn income on. The other cost sits inside the enhanced participation rate accounts: a 1.00% annual strategy fee that buys a higher participation rate but can erode account value in a flat market. If you skip the rider and stick to standard (non-enhanced) accounts, the base contract carries no explicit annual fee.

Legal Entity: Nassau Life and Annuity Company

Parent: Nassau Financial Group

A.M. Best Rating: B++