SecureLink Ultra 7 review

Yes, for the right buyer. This is a good annuity for someone who wants principal protection with index-linked upside, is comfortable leaving the money untouched for seven years or longer, and values a highly rated carrier. It is less appealing for someone who wants short-term access to principal, needs a built-in lifetime income rider, or is buying primarily because of the 7% bonus headline — because that bonus does not arrive until the 10th year and its conditions are not spelled out in the materials a shopper actually receives.

The main reason to buy SecureLink Ultra 7 is accumulation with downside protection: you want more growth potential than a traditional fixed annuity offers, but you do not want to risk principal in the market. The secondary reason is the crediting flexibility — five indices and several strategy types let you position the contract for different market conditions. For a buyer who genuinely intends to hold for a decade, the 7% persistency bonus adds a third reason, since it rewards exactly that behavior. The catch is that the first two reasons stand on their own; the third depends on documentation the carrier has not published.

I think this is best for a conservative accumulation buyer, roughly age 55 to 75, who has retirement dollars they will not need for at least seven years and would prefer to leave in place for ten. It works in both qualified (IRA) and non-qualified money, and the contract explicitly waives surrender charges on required minimum distributions, which makes it workable inside an IRA. It is a poor fit for anyone who might need meaningful liquidity in the first several years, anyone whose main goal is guaranteed lifetime income, and anyone who is being sold on the bonus without seeing its terms in writing.

You are not buying stock-market participation. You are buying a principal-protected insurance contract that credits interest using index-linked formulas — caps, participation rates, performance triggers, and spreads — rather than paying you the raw index return. That distinction matters because your money is not in the market; the insurer uses the index only as a yardstick to calculate credited interest, and your principal is shielded from index losses. On top of that core mechanic, Securian layers a delayed persistency bonus that functions as a retention incentive: hold the contract long enough and the company credits an extra amount. What you are really buying, then, is protection first, index-linked growth second, and a hold-to-year-10 kicker third.

The engine of this contract is its crediting menu. You allocate your premium across one-year strategies tied to five indices — the S&P 500, the Barclays All Caps Trailblazer 5 Index, the MSCI EAFE, the SG Climate Prepared Index, and the Nasdaq-100 — plus a one-year fixed (Guaranteed Interest) account. Each strategy shapes your return differently: a cap strategy limits how much of a positive index move you keep, a participation-rate strategy credits a set percentage of the gain, a performance-trigger strategy pays a flat declared rate whenever the index is flat or up, and a spread strategy subtracts a fixed percentage before crediting.

Rates are banded by premium size, rising as you put in more, across three tiers: under $100,000, $100,000 to $499,999, and $500,000 or more. As of the May 1, 2026 rate sheet — a snapshot that will change — the headline figures were:

| Strategy | Under $100k | $100k–$499,999 | $500k+ |

|---|---|---|---|

| S&P 500 1-Yr Point-to-Point Cap | 9.80% | 10.00% | 10.20% |

| S&P 500 1-Yr Participation Rate (uncapped) | 48% | 50% | 52% |

| S&P 500 1-Yr Performance Trigger | 6.60% | 6.75% | 6.90% |

| MSCI EAFE 1-Yr Point-to-Point Cap | 8.25% | 8.50% | 8.75% |

| Nasdaq-100 1-Yr Point-to-Point Cap | 8.25% | 8.50% | 8.75% |

| Barclays Trailblazer 5 Participation (2% spread) | 215% | 220% | 225% |

| Fixed (Guaranteed Interest) Account | 4.40% | 4.50% | 4.60% |

Two things are worth noticing. First, these are current, non-guaranteed declared rates; only the contract's guaranteed floors (for example, a 2.00% minimum cap on the S&P 500 strategy) are contractual. Second, the top S&P 500 cap of 10.20% runs modestly higher than the 5-year SecureLink Ultra 5 on the same rate sheet, where the comparable cap tops out at 9.95%. That is the tradeoff between the two siblings running in an unusual direction, which the next section unpacks.

The feature Securian leans on to distinguish Ultra 7 is a 7% persistency bonus, credited on the 10th contract anniversary and calculated as 7% of premiums paid less withdrawals. It is important to be precise about what is and is not known here, because the documentation is unusually thin. The bonus is disclosed in exactly one place — the "Other" free-text field of the Wink product profile. Neither the SecureLink Ultra 7 consumer brochure nor the Quick Facts sheet mentions any bonus at all. That means the vesting schedule, any conditions, and whether the bonus reduces caps or carries a fee are simply not documented in the materials a buyer receives. If this bonus is central to your decision, get the terms in writing from Securian before you sign; do not treat it as a settled feature.

Assuming it credits as described, the honest arithmetic is modest. A one-time 7% credit at year 10, spread across those ten years, works out to roughly two-thirds of a percentage point of extra annual yield — about 0.68% per year if held the full decade — and only on premiums net of withdrawals. That is a genuine sweetener for a true long-hold buyer, but it is not a windfall, and it arrives three years after the seven-year surrender period ends, so you cannot collect it and walk away at surrender.

Here is where the sibling comparison becomes useful. The tradeoff between Ultra 5 and Ultra 7 runs opposite to the usual pattern. Ultra 7 carries the smaller bonus (7% versus Ultra 5's 10%) but the higher caps (its top S&P 500 cap of 10.20% versus Ultra 5's 9.95%, same May 1, 2026 sheet). In plain terms, the seven-year buyer trades a bigger delayed bonus for better ongoing crediting. For someone focused on year-over-year growth rather than a lump-sum bonus at year 10, that is arguably the better end of the trade — but it depends on how long you actually hold and which lever you value more.

This is a seven-year commitment, and it should be funded with money you will not need in that window. You can take up to 10% of the prior anniversary's contract value each year free of surrender charges (10% of the purchase payment in year one), and required minimum distributions above that 10% are also penalty-free — a meaningful detail for IRA money. Withdrawals beyond the free amount incur a surrender charge on the published schedule (9% in year one, declining to 3% in year seven) plus a market value adjustment.

The market value adjustment — an MVA — means the penalty on a larger withdrawal moves with interest rates: if rates have risen since you bought, the adjustment can increase your cost, and if they have fallen, it can reduce it. The contract also waives surrender charges and the MVA, after the first year, for a qualifying hospital or medical-care confinement of at least 90 days, a terminal condition (life expectancy of 12 months or less), annuitization, or death; a one-year waiting period applies after any ownership change. Even with those provisions, this should not be treated as emergency cash.

On paper, this is a low-fee contract. Securian's materials list no mortality and expense charge, no product fee, no administration charge, and no annual contract fee — the base contract has no explicit ongoing fee, which is common for accumulation FIAs of this type. That does not mean the product is free of cost; the real "cost" is structural. Your upside is limited by caps, participation rates, and spreads, so in a strong market year you will keep only part of the index gain. Because there is no income rider, there is also no rider fee — but no guaranteed lifetime income either.

Two documentation gaps deserve flagging. First, the persistency bonus terms are not disclosed, so any bonus-related cost or cap reduction is unknown from the materials reviewed. Second, the minimum guaranteed surrender value is stated inconsistently across sources: Securian's own Quick Facts sheet and consumer brochure both put it at 87.5% of the purchase payment (accumulated at a guaranteed 1%–3%), while the third-party Wink profile lists 91%. Following the carrier's own literature, we use the more conservative 87.5% figure — but the discrepancy is worth confirming directly if the guaranteed floor matters to you.

Legal Entity: Minnesota Life Insurance Company

Parent: Securian Financial Group, Inc.

A.M. Best Rating: A+