EverGuard Aspire 5-Year review

Yes, for the specific buyer it's built for. If you want a principal-protected annuity with index-linked growth potential and don't want to commit to a 7- or 10-year surrender schedule, EverGuard Aspire 5-Year is a reasonable, competitively structured way to get that. It's a weaker fit if you're shopping primarily for guaranteed lifetime income, since this version doesn't offer an income rider at all.

The core appeal is accumulation with a floor. Someone puts money into this contract because they want upside tied to index performance — potentially into the double digits in a strong year on the higher-cap strategy — without the risk of losing principal to a market downturn. The secondary draw is time horizon: five years is a meaningfully shorter commitment than the 7- and 10-year versions Talcott also sells under the EverGuard Aspire name, which matters to someone who doesn't want to lock money up for a decade to get FIA-style protection.

I think this is best suited to someone with $25,000 or more in retirement or after-tax savings they don't need immediate access to, who wants market-linked growth potential without direct equity risk, and who specifically doesn't want a 7-to-10-year surrender commitment. It's a poor fit for anyone who expects to need more than the 10% free-withdrawal amount in the first five years, and it's not the right pick for someone whose main goal is turning savings into a guaranteed paycheck — there's no income rider on this contract at all.

You aren't buying stock market exposure. You're buying a five-year insurance contract that credits interest based partly on the performance of a handful of indices — the S&P 500 among them — while your principal stays protected from market losses. Your return is shaped by caps and participation rates, not the raw index return, so in a year the S&P 500 returns 20%, your credited interest is capped well below that. In exchange for giving up unlimited upside, you get a guaranteed floor: worst case, you get back the Minimum Guaranteed Surrender Value, which here is 87.5% of premium accumulating at 0.15%-3% interest, not zero.

EverGuard Aspire 5-Year credits interest using annual point-to-point crediting across four index-linked account options — the S&P 500, the S&P 500 Engle 15% VT TCA Index, the Invesco BofA QQQ Balanced FC Index, and the Goldman Sachs Enhanced Multi-Asset Index — plus a fixed interest option that currently pays 4.00%-4.25% depending on premium size. Per the brochure materials, caps run roughly 9.00% to 12.00% and participation rates roughly 64% to 100%, with the exact number depending on which index and which allocation approach is chosen; the S&P 500 strategy sits at the lower end of that range and other strategy/model combinations reach the higher end. Talcott also offers two preset Model Portfolios — Model 1 (Balanced Rate Guarantee) and Model 2 (Equity Focused) — as an alternative to picking strategies manually, though only one model can be combined with manually elected allocations at a time. These cap and participation figures were effective as of November 3, 2025 and, like every FIA rate, are a snapshot rather than a guarantee — they can reset each contract year.

The most important secondary fact here is what this contract doesn't do: it's the surrender-period sibling with the least commitment in the EverGuard Aspire family. Talcott also sells 7-year and 10-year versions of this same product line, including a 10-year variant with an optional premium bonus (15% for issue ages 0-75, 12% for ages 76-85) — but that bonus comes at the cost of meaningfully lower caps, in roughly the 4.75%-6.50% range instead of the 9%-12% range available on this 5-year, non-bonus contract. So the version you're looking at carries the strongest crediting terms in the family; the other durations trade a longer surrender period for either more time to compound or, on the bonus version, a bigger day-one number in exchange for giving up most of the upside potential.

You can withdraw up to 10% of Contract Value each year, starting after the first Contract Anniversary, without a surrender charge. Anything beyond that during the 5-year surrender period runs into the withdrawal-charge schedule below, and a market value adjustment may also apply — meaning the penalty on a larger withdrawal can move with interest rates, for better or worse, on top of the stated surrender percentage. Required minimum distributions are treated more gently: they're free of both withdrawal charges and MVA in the first contract year, though in later years they count against your 10% free-withdrawal allowance rather than being unlimited. Per the brochure materials, Talcott may also waive withdrawal charges and MVA for nursing home or hospital confinement (90 consecutive days) or a terminal illness diagnosis (life expectancy of 12 months or less), both after the first contract anniversary. Even with those provisions, this is five-year money, not an emergency fund.

There's no separate rider fee to weigh here because this version doesn't carry an income rider or any other optional fee-based rider, and the brochure materials don't indicate a stated base contract fee — typical for FIAs where the carrier's margin comes from the caps and participation rates rather than an explicit charge. The real cost of this contract shows up structurally, not as a line-item fee: your upside is capped, some strategies pay less than full participation in the index gain, and the MVA is a real risk if you need a larger withdrawal while rates have moved against you. Weigh those structural tradeoffs against the guaranteed floor and the standard death benefit — full Account Value or the Minimum Guaranteed Surrender Value, whichever is greater, paid free of withdrawal charges or MVA to your beneficiary — before deciding whether the crediting menu is worth the commitment.

Legal Entity: Talcott Resolution Life and Annuity Insurance Company

Parent: Talcott Resolution

A.M. Best Rating: A-