Personal Choice Annuity 5 review

Depends on how you buy it. As a pure rate play — set it, forget it, take the lump sum or roll it at maturity — Personal Choice Annuity 5's 6.25% is a genuinely good five-year rate, and Sentinel doesn't charge you anything extra to get it. It's a weaker fit if you want the reassurance of built-in liquidity or a death benefit that pays out at full account value; you have to shop the rider menu and accept a lower net rate to get either one.

Someone shopping strictly on rate would buy this contract because 6.25% for five years, guaranteed, with no base-contract fees, is hard to beat in this duration band. The $2,500 minimum also opens the door to buyers with smaller sums to place — most five-year MYGAs from larger carriers start at $10,000 to $25,000. For someone who has no plans to touch the money before maturity and doesn't need a death benefit larger than cash surrender value, the bare contract is a clean, low-friction way to lock in a rate.

I think this fits a buyer in their 60s or 70s with non-qualified or IRA money they're confident they won't need for five years, who is comparison-shopping purely on rate and doesn't plan to add riders. It's a weaker match for someone who wants any kind of penalty-free access during the term, anyone concerned about leaving heirs a full account-value death benefit, or someone who lives in one of the sixteen states where this isn't approved.

You're buying a five-year interest-rate guarantee, full stop — not a flexible savings vehicle. The base contract has no free-withdrawal provision at all, carries no M&E or admin fees, and pays cash surrender value, not account value, if you die during the surrender period unless you've added the Full Account Value Death Benefit rider. Everything Sentinel would otherwise bundle for free at another carrier — a way to touch some money each year, RMD access, a death benefit that pays the actual account balance — is sold separately here, each shaving a fraction of a point off your declared rate. That's a different design philosophy from a bundled-features MYGA, and it means the contract you actually end up with depends entirely on which boxes you check at issue.

The core of this product is simple: Sentinel currently declares 6.25% and guarantees it for the entire five-year period (per Wink data as of March 2026 — rates reset for new contracts and this number will move). There's no index participation, no cap, no spread — it's a straight fixed rate credited to the account value. The minimum guaranteed rate under the contract, per the agent quick sheet, runs 1.0% to 3%, though that floor only becomes relevant on renewal after the initial guarantee period ends, not during the locked five years. Selecting any of the six optional riders reduces the declared rate you actually earn, so the 6.25% headline is a best case, not the number every buyer receives.

The more distinctive piece of this contract is the Terminal Illness/Nursing Home Care rider (-0.15% off the rate). It waives the surrender charge if the annuitant is diagnosed with a stroke, heart attack, or life-threatening cancer, or needs 90-plus consecutive days of skilled nursing care. That's a meaningful form of principal protection that a lot of bare-bones MYGAs don't offer at any price, and at a 0.15-point cost it's cheap relative to what it buys — access to the full account value, penalty-free, at exactly the moment a family is least equipped to deal with a locked-up annuity.

There's no free withdrawal in the base contract — none. If you want to take any amount out before the surrender schedule expires without a charge, you need to add the Preferred 10% Free Withdrawal rider (-0.08%) at issue, since it can't be added later. Absent that rider, the surrender schedule below applies to withdrawals, and a market value adjustment (MVA) applies on top of it, meaning the penalty can move against you if interest rates have risen since you bought the contract. There is a standard 30-day window before the end of the guarantee period where you can withdraw or roll the contract without charge or MVA — that's the natural exit ramp at each renewal. RMD withdrawals aren't automatically penalty-free either; that requires its own optional rider.

The base contract itself is fee-free — no M&E, no product charge, no annual administration fee, which is genuinely rare and worth crediting. But the a la carte rider menu means the "real" cost of the features most buyers want shows up as rate reduction instead of a stated fee: Required Minimum Distribution access costs -0.16%, the 10% free-withdrawal rider costs -0.08%, terminal illness/nursing home protection costs -0.15%, a 72(t) rider costs -0.05%, the Accumulated Interest Withdrawal rider costs -0.08%, and upgrading the death benefit to full account value costs -0.35%. Stack the two riders most buyers would actually want — free withdrawal and the full death benefit — and you're giving up roughly 0.43 points, landing near 5.82% instead of 6.25%. Add RMD access and it's closer to 5.66%. None of that makes the base rate misleading, but it does mean the number on the rate sheet isn't necessarily the number most buyers will earn.

Legal Entity: Sentinel Security Life Insurance Company

Parent: A-Cap

A.M. Best Rating: B++