Guaranteed Income Annuity 10 Year review

It depends, and more than usual. For a buyer who specifically wants the lifetime income rider and is comfortable with a B-rated carrier, this is a reasonable, feature-rich income contract. For someone shopping purely on a locked accumulation rate, it is a weaker fit, because the base rate floats and the current credited rate is modest. The answer hinges almost entirely on which of the three riders you intend to use and whether the carrier's strength rating is acceptable to you.

The main reason to buy this contract is the optional lifetime income rider, which grows an income base at 8.50% compounded each year for up to a 10-year accumulation window (resettable to as long as 20 years) and adds an 11% bonus to that base at election. For a buyer planning to turn on guaranteed lifetime income several years out, that is a competitive deferral engine. A second reason is flexibility: if income is not the goal, the same contract can instead deliver a premium bonus of up to 10% to actual account value, or an enhanced death benefit for legacy planning. The low $5,000 minimum and wide 0-85 issue-age range also make it accessible.

I think this is best for a pre-retiree or early retiree who has a specific job in mind for the money — most often deferring several years and then switching on lifetime income — and who is willing to accept a B-rated carrier to get the roll-up and bonus terms. It also fits a growth-minded buyer who wants the account-value premium bonus and does not need liquidity for a decade. It is a poor fit for anyone who wants a simple, locked-rate MYGA, anyone uneasy about carrier financial strength, and anyone who might need principal back before the surrender schedule burns off.

Strip away the name and you are buying a 10-year fixed annuity with a floating base rate and a menu of three riders, exactly one of which you may elect. The base account does not earn a fixed guaranteed rate for the full term the way a conventional MYGA does. Instead, credited interest is set as a participation rate — 55% — applied to a benchmark tied to SOFR, recalculated on a rolling basis, with a floor of 1.00% if the benchmark goes negative. As of the Wink data dated 10/30/2024, the credited fixed-account rate was 3.00%. One nuance worth flagging: the product launched in 2018 referencing LIBOR, and current materials reference SOFR after the industry's LIBOR-to-SOFR transition. Older agent sheets also described a two-year initial guarantee period while the current profile shows an annual re-guarantee, so if the locked-in window matters to you, confirm the current terms directly. The product type itself is a low-confidence call — Wink labels it "MYG Fixed," but because the rate floats it does not behave like a standard guaranteed-rate MYGA.

The headline feature is the optional Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefit (GLWB) Rider VI. When you elect it, the contract tracks a separate Benefit Base — a bookkeeping figure used only to calculate income, never a cash amount you can withdraw. At election, an 11% bonus is added to that Benefit Base, and the base then grows at 8.50% compounded annually across a 10-year accumulation period (resettable up to a 20-year maximum), continuing until age 85 or until you start income. When you turn income on, a withdrawal percentage based on your age is applied to that grown Benefit Base to set your guaranteed lifetime payment. Two points must stay clear. First, the 11% bonus and the 8.50% roll-up apply to the Benefit Base, not to your account value — they inflate the figure used to compute income, not the cash you could walk away with. Second, electing the GLWB means you forgo the account-value premium bonus entirely; the 11% is the only bonus you get, and it is not spendable cash. The rider costs 1.25% of the Benefit Base in years 1-5 and 1.60% in years 6-10, deducted from account value.

The premium bonus is where this contract gets genuinely confusing, and it is worth slowing down on. There are two different kinds of bonus here, and which one you get depends on the rider you elect. If you choose the Accumulation Benefit Rider, you receive an account-value premium bonus — real money added to your cash value — of 10% at ages 0-70, 8% at 71-80, and 6% at 81-85, vesting over a 10-year schedule (0% in year one, rising to fully vested by year 11) that applies to excess withdrawals and surrenders. The Legacy Benefit Rider pays a smaller account-value bonus (10% / 5% / 3% by the same age bands) and adds the enhanced death benefit. But if you instead elect the GLWB, there is no account-value bonus at all — you get only the 11% Benefit Base bonus described above, which is not cash value. So the same brochure figure, "premium bonus," means spendable account value under two riders and a phantom income figure under the third. Do not treat them as interchangeable.

This is a 10-year commitment, and the surrender charge starts high — 10% in year one — before stepping down one point per year to 1% in year ten. A market value adjustment (MVA) also applies, meaning a surrender can be adjusted up or down based on interest-rate movement since you bought, adding uncertainty to what you would actually receive if you cashed out early. After the first policy year you can withdraw up to 10% of premium paid each year without a surrender charge, and required minimum distributions are penalty-free from year one on, which helps qualified-money buyers. The fine print matters: no more than two withdrawals per policy year, a $250 minimum per withdrawal, and at least $2,500 must remain in the account afterward. Treat this contract as money you will not touch beyond the free amount for a decade.

There is no separately stated base-contract fee, but any rider you elect carries a charge of 1.25% of its Benefit Base in years 1-5 and 1.60% in years 6-10. That fee is calculated on the rider's Benefit Base but deducted from your account value, so in an income-rider scenario you are paying a percentage of the larger phantom base out of your smaller real cash — a structure that can erode account value faster than the headline percentage suggests. The trade is straightforward to name: that 1.25%-to-1.60% charge buys either an 8.50% income roll-up, a premium bonus, or an enhanced death benefit, and it is only worth paying if you actually use the feature you elected. The other tradeoff is structural — the floating SOFR-linked base rate means your accumulation is not locked, so the "guaranteed" side of this contract is guaranteed only down to the 1.00% floor, not at any particular competitive rate.

Legal Entity: Sentinel Security Life Insurance Company

Parent: A-Cap

A.M. Best Rating: B

Sentinel Security Life Insurance Company is affiliated with A-Cap and carries an A.M. Best rating of B. That is a below-average financial-strength grade relative to the large national carriers, and it deserves weight on any 10-year contract — especially one whose value rests on lifetime-income and death-benefit guarantees the insurer must be around to honor.