Milestone Max MYGA 5-Year review

Yes, for the right buyer, with qualifications. As a plain locked-rate MYGA it does what it says: a declared rate guaranteed for five years, no moving parts, no cap or participation rate to track. It's not the highest-yielding 5-year MYGA on the market, and the $25,000 minimum premium and 9% first-year surrender charge are real friction points for smaller or more liquidity-sensitive buyers. Where it earns its keep is the built-in care waiver — that's a feature you'd otherwise have to pay for as an optional rider on many competing products, and here it's part of the base contract at no cost.

The core reason is the same as any MYGA: a known, guaranteed rate for a fixed term, without market risk. Someone with $25,000 or more sitting in a low-yield savings account or a maturing CD who doesn't need the money for five years is the obvious candidate. The secondary reason is the chronic-illness liquidity relief — a buyer who's thought ahead about the possibility of needing care later in the surrender window gets a real backstop built in, not an add-on they had to remember to select.

I think this fits someone in or near retirement with $25,000-plus in non-qualified savings, or a qualified account subject to RMDs, who wants a five-year rate lock and values the peace of mind of a no-cost care waiver over squeezing out the last basis point of yield. It's a weaker fit for anyone who might need more than 10% of the account value in a given year, anyone shopping primarily on rate who's willing to compare across the full 5-year MYGA field, and anyone who can't clear the $25,000 minimum — Sagicor's own base Milestone MYGA has a lower $15,000 entry point, though it's no longer available in most states.

You're buying a single-premium deferred annuity, not an investment account. Sagicor takes your premium, credits it at a declared fixed rate for five years, and guarantees you won't get back less than the minimum guaranteed surrender value if you cash out early. There's no index exposure, no upside beyond the stated rate, and no downside beyond the surrender schedule and MVA if you pull more than the free-withdrawal amount. The "Max" in the name signals this is Sagicor's currently-marketed, broadly-approved version of the Milestone MYGA — distinct from the original Milestone MYGA 5-Year, which carries a lower $15,000 minimum and narrower rate bands but is now approved in only a handful of states and isn't a realistic option for most shoppers.

The crediting mechanic is as simple as MYGAs get: your premium earns a fixed, declared rate for the full five-year guarantee period, banded by premium size — 4.95% below $75,000 and 5.20% at $75,000 or more, as of the November 2025 rate sheet Sagicor was quoting. Both figures are snapshots, not permanent features of the product; rates reset for new contracts as Sagicor's declared rate changes. At the end of the five-year term, a 30-day penalty-free window opens during which you can withdraw the full account value without surrender charge or MVA, or let the contract automatically renew into a new guarantee period at whatever rate Sagicor is then offering, subject to a fresh surrender schedule and MVA.

The built-in surrender-charge waiver is the feature that separates Max from a commodity MYGA. After the first contract year, if you're confined to a nursing home, diagnosed with a terminal illness, or placed in a confined-care facility, you can withdraw up to the full accumulation value without surrender charge or MVA — no extra rider, no extra fee, no election required at issue. Compare that to Sagicor's own original Milestone MYGA, whose product profile lists no waiver benefit at all. It won't matter to a buyer who never needs it, but for anyone thinking about the five-year window as more than a pure rate play, it's a meaningful piece of downside protection that most competing MYGAs charge for or simply don't offer.

You're locking up most of your principal for five years in exchange for the guaranteed rate. Sagicor allows a free withdrawal of 10% of the prior contract anniversary's accumulation value each year starting in contract year two — there's no free withdrawal in year one, which is worth knowing if you might need cash sooner than expected. Anything above that 10%, or any withdrawal in year one, triggers the surrender charge below and a market value adjustment, which can move in either direction depending on where interest rates sit relative to when you bought the contract. Qualified accounts subject to RMDs get a carve-out: RMD amounts can come out penalty-free starting in contract year one, so this product doesn't create an RMD problem for IRA money. Treat the 9%-down-to-5% schedule as a real five-year commitment, not a source of emergency liquidity, and remember the nursing-home/terminal-illness waiver is the one exception where the surrender schedule effectively disappears if the triggering event occurs.

There's no annual contract fee and no rider fee here — the nursing-home/terminal-illness waiver is built into the base contract at no explicit cost, which is unusual generosity for a fixed-rate annuity. The real tradeoffs aren't fees, they're structural. The $25,000 minimum premium is meaningfully higher than the $15,000 floor on Sagicor's own original Milestone MYGA and higher than some competing 5-year MYGAs that open at $10,000-$20,000. The top rate band also doesn't kick in until $75,000, so a buyer putting in $30,000 or $50,000 is stuck at the lower 4.95% rate even though that's well above the minimum. And the surrender schedule opens at 9% in year one — some 5-year MYGAs in the market start lower, around 7-8%. None of this makes the product a poor choice, but it does mean the "Max" upgrade over the base Milestone MYGA — better rate, broader state approval, built-in waiver — comes at the cost of a higher entry bar and a modestly steeper early exit penalty.

Legal Entity: Sagicor Life Insurance Company

Parent: Sagicor Financial Company, Ltd.

A.M. Best Rating: A-