Stellar Security 5 review

For the right narrow slice of buyers, maybe, but I'd call it a conditional yes at best. The contract itself is unremarkable in a good way — a straight 5-year rate lock, no MVA, a death benefit that doesn't get clipped by surrender charges. What holds it back is the carrier picture: a real downgrade from B++ to B, and rate data that's about two years stale and contradicts itself. I wouldn't call this a good annuity until someone gets a current quote and confirms the rating hasn't slipped further.

The appeal here is simplicity and a full return of account value at death. Someone who wants a short-duration, no-surprises MYGA — one rate, one term, no index math, no MVA risk — and who happens to live in one of the small number of states where Stellar National is approved, might look at this as an easy accumulation vehicle. The lack of an MVA in particular is worth something: it means the account value quoted is the account value you'd actually get if you needed to break the contract early (net of the surrender charge), not a value that can be pushed lower by a rate-movement penalty on top of that charge.

I think this fits someone who wants a plain, short-term guaranteed-rate contract, isn't chasing the highest yield on the market, and is comfortable with a smaller, lower-rated carrier in exchange for simplicity. It is not a fit for someone who wants the strongest possible claims-paying ability, someone who wants a current, verifiable rate before they start the conversation, or someone in most of the country — availability here is genuinely narrow. It's also not a fit for anyone who needs money back sooner than year one, since free withdrawals don't open up until after the first contract year.

You're buying a fixed-rate insurance contract, not an investment. Stellar National guarantees a stated rate of return for five years in exchange for a lump-sum premium, and that guarantee is only as good as the company standing behind it. With a B-rated carrier, "guaranteed" carries a bit more asterisk than it would with an A-rated household name — a B rating from A.M. Best reflects "fair" ability to meet ongoing obligations, not the "excellent" or "superior" tiers this site's own recommendation engine requires (A− or better) before it will surface a product. That doesn't mean the contract won't pay as promised. It means the cushion for absorbing bad news is thinner than it is with a larger, better-capitalized carrier.

The core feature is about as simple as MYGAs get: premium goes in, one fixed rate applies for the entire 5-year term, and that rate doesn't step down or reset mid-contract the way some banded products do. The catch is that the site's only source for what that rate actually is comes from two documents that disagree. The 2023 consumer brochure and quick reference (both dated 10/16/23, with the rate itself effective 7/15/2023) quote 5.65%. The Wink product profile, which is the more recent data point at 9/17/2024, lists 3.95% guaranteed for the full five years. That's not a small rounding difference — it's a swing of over a point and a half, and it lines up with the kind of broad rate-environment move that happened across the MYGA market between mid-2023 and late 2024. Whatever the true number is today, in mid-2026, neither figure on file should be assumed current. Get a live quote before assuming either number applies.

The secondary feature worth flagging is the death benefit design, paired with the absence of an MVA. On death, this contract pays the full account value with no surrender charges applied — beneficiaries aren't penalized for the contract being mid-surrender-schedule when the owner dies. Combine that with the fact that there's no market value adjustment on any withdrawal, and the numbers on the statement are the numbers you'd actually walk away with (net of any applicable surrender charge on a full or partial surrender). For a smaller carrier where I'd already be cautious about committing large sums, that clean structure is a real point in its favor — it removes one layer of "the fine print made this worse than it looked" risk. There's also a Medical Facility Confinement waiver that allows extra penalty-free access if the owner is confined to a qualifying facility after year one, and the contract is friendly to required minimum distributions, which are permitted after just six months.

This is a 5-year commitment, and the surrender schedule is front-loaded: 9% in each of the first two years, then stepping down to 8%, 7%, and 6% in years three through five. That's steeper in years one and two than some peer MYGAs, which matters if there's any real chance the money is needed early. Free withdrawals of 10% of account value are available each year starting after year one, and interest-only withdrawals are permitted even sooner, after the first month. Because there's no MVA, whatever surrender charge applies is the only penalty in play — there's no additional interest-rate-driven adjustment stacked on top.

There's no explicit annual contract fee or rider fee disclosed in the available materials — this is a straightforward MYGA without a fee-based rider layer. The real tradeoffs are qualitative rather than a line-item cost. First, the carrier: Stellar National is small, and its A.M. Best rating went from B++ to a plain B between the January 2023 affirmation cited in the brochure and the September 2024 Wink snapshot. That's a genuine downgrade, not a rounding difference in how two documents described the same rating, and it should factor into how much someone is willing to commit here. Second, the rate itself is unverified — with the brochure and the Wink snapshot disagreeing by more than a point and a half, and both now well over a year old, there's no reliable current number to evaluate this against peer MYGAs without a fresh quote. Third, availability is genuinely narrow; this product is not approved in the large majority of states, which limits who can even consider it regardless of how the numbers shake out.

Legal Entity: Stellar National Life Insurance Company

A.M. Best Rating: B