Premier Variable Annuity FP Series review

It depends, and more than usual the answer hinges on how you are buying it. For an investor already working with a fee-based advisor who wants tax-deferred market participation and values the optional protection riders, this is a reasonable fee-based vehicle from an exceptionally strong carrier. It is a poor fit for someone who wants principal protection, a guaranteed rate, or simple liquidity, because none of those are what a variable annuity provides. The subaccounts can lose value, and that risk does not go away just because the contract is issued by a top-rated insurer.

The main reason to buy the FP Series is tax-deferred growth on money you have already maxed out in other tax-advantaged accounts, with the option to layer on guarantees you cannot easily replicate in a brokerage account. The secondary reason is the advisory structure itself. Because this is the fee-based share class, an investor who pays their advisor a flat fee rather than a commission may find the cost structure cleaner and more transparent than the commission-based Premier VA II. In practice, this is the version an RIA or fee-based planner reaches for when they want a New York Life variable annuity inside a managed, fee-based relationship.

I think the FP Series is best for an investor in the accumulation phase, often pre-retirement, who has a fee-based advisor, has already filled up 401(k) and IRA space, and wants additional tax-deferred market exposure with the option to add downside or income protection later. It works in both qualified and non-qualified accounts, though the tax deferral is most meaningful with non-qualified money, since a qualified account is already tax-deferred. It is less appealing for someone who wants guarantees on principal, someone buying on commission (the Premier VA II is the commission sibling), or someone who would be better served by a lower-cost brokerage portfolio without the insurance wrapper.

You are not buying a guaranteed return, and you are not buying principal protection. You are buying a tax-deferred investment account where your money goes into variable subaccounts that behave like mutual funds, rising and falling with the markets. The insurance wrapper adds tax deferral, a death benefit, and the ability to bolt on optional living-benefit guarantees. The "FP Series" label tells you this is the fee-based share class, designed for advisory distribution rather than commission sales. The real value here is the combination of tax deferral, optional guarantees, and carrier strength, not market upside, because the upside is the same market upside you could get elsewhere, just inside an insurance contract with its own fee layer.

The core of the contract is the variable subaccount menu. Your premium, less charges, is allocated across subaccounts you select, each of which holds an underlying investment portfolio. According to the brochure, the net subaccount expense range runs from roughly 0.28% to 1.34%, so the cost of the underlying investments varies meaningfully depending on which subaccounts you choose. Your account value moves with the performance of those subaccounts, which means it can go up and it can go down. There is no cap and no floor, because this is genuine market participation, not the indexed crediting you would find in a fixed indexed annuity. On top of the subaccount expenses, the base contract charges a 1.30% mortality and expense (M&E) fee, assessed quarterly on adjusted premiums paid, plus a $30 annual contract fee that is waived once the account value reaches $100,000.

The most meaningful optional feature is the Investment Preservation Rider (IPR) - FP Series. This is a living-benefit-style rider that, for a fee of 0.50% to 1.30% annually (charged quarterly), is designed to protect a portion of your investment over a set holding period regardless of how the subaccounts perform. The reason it matters is that it directly addresses the central weakness of any variable annuity: market risk to principal. If you genuinely intend to use that protection, the rider can justify part of the contract's cost. If you do not turn it on, you are paying base contract fees for market exposure you could get more cheaply elsewhere. The contract also includes an optional annual-reset death benefit (0.25% to 1.00% annually) that locks in the highest contract anniversary value as a floor for what your beneficiaries receive, which is a real estate-planning feature for someone who wants to pass the account on.

This is a 7-year commitment with a declining surrender charge, and a market value adjustment (MVA) may also apply. An MVA means that if you withdraw more than the free amount during the surrender period, the penalty is adjusted up or down based on interest-rate movements since you bought the contract, so the cost of an early exit is not fully fixed. Each year you can withdraw a free amount without a surrender charge: in year one, the greater of 10% of premiums paid, your earnings, or 10% of account value; in later years, the greater of 10% of the previous anniversary value, earnings, or 10% of account value. New York Life also offers surrender-charge waivers for nursing home confinement, terminal illness, disability, and unemployment, which add a layer of access in genuine hardship situations. Required minimum distributions are generally accommodated. Even so, this is a long-term contract, and the combination of surrender charges and a possible MVA means you should not treat it as a liquid account during the first seven years.

The fee stack is the heart of the tradeoff, and it has several layers. The base contract charges a 1.30% M&E fee assessed quarterly on adjusted premiums paid, plus a $30 annual contract fee (waived at $100,000 of account value). On top of that, the underlying subaccounts carry net expenses of roughly 0.28% to 1.34% depending on what you select. If you add the Investment Preservation Rider, that is another 0.50% to 1.30% annually, and the optional enhanced death benefit adds 0.25% to 1.00%. Stacked together, a fully optioned contract can carry meaningful annual drag, and because these fees compound against market performance, they quietly reduce whatever the subaccounts earn over time. The honest way to read this is that the M&E fee buys you the insurance wrapper and its guarantees, the subaccount expense buys you the investment management, and the rider fees buy you specific protections. Whether the total is worth it depends almost entirely on whether you actually use the riders you are paying for. The FP Series fee-based structure can make this math cleaner than a commission product, but the underlying tradeoff is the same.

Legal Entity: New York Life Insurance and Annuity Corporation

Parent: New York Life Insurance Company

A.M. Best Rating: A++