EverGuard Assurance 10 review

Yes, for the right buyer — and here the "right buyer" test is unusually strict. This is a good annuity for someone who wants a protected lifetime income stream, is comfortable deferring for years before turning it on, and will genuinely use the rider they are paying for. It is a poor fit for anyone who mainly wants growth, wants the option to skip the rider fee, or thinks they might need to walk away with most of their money before the 10-year schedule runs out.

The main reason to buy EverGuard Assurance 10 is to convert a lump sum today into a larger guaranteed paycheck later, with principal protected from market losses along the way. The rider does the heavy lifting: it grows an income base at a compound rate you can count on regardless of what the indices do, and it hands you a lifetime withdrawal percentage based on your age when you switch income on. The secondary reason is the built-in care benefit — if you later cannot perform basic daily activities, your income can double for a stretch at no added charge, which turns a plain income rider into a partial care backstop.

I think this annuity is best for someone in the roughly 55-to-70 window who is using long-term, qualified or non-qualified retirement dollars, plans to leave the money alone for at least five to ten years, and wants the certainty of a built-in income rider rather than betting on future annuitization. It is less attractive for a younger accumulator, for anyone who wants the flexibility to drop a rider fee if their plans change, and for buyers in California or New York, where the contract is not offered.

You are not buying stock-market upside, and you are not really buying the account value. You are buying a guaranteed income formula wrapped around a principal-protected annuity. The most important thing to understand is the difference between two separate numbers. Your Contract Value (also called the account value) is your real, walk-away money — it grows only from the modest index caps and the fixed option. Your Income Benefit Base is a separate, behind-the-scenes figure used only to calculate your lifetime income; it is not a pile of cash you can surrender for or leave to heirs. The 20% bonus and the compound roll-ups all apply to that benefit base, not to your Contract Value. So when the marketing points to a "20% bonus" or a "10% roll-up," read that as a bigger future paycheck, not as bigger walk-away money. If you surrender the contract or die, what changes hands is tied to the Contract Value, not the inflated income base.

Every buyer must select one of two GLWB options at issue, and the rider cannot be terminated later at your request — this is a mandatory, built-in benefit, not an optional add-on.

Option 1, Early Path GLWB II, starts by adding a 20% bonus to your Income Benefit Base on day one, then applies 4% compound Deferral Credits to that base each year for the first ten contract years. The front-loaded bonus makes this path stronger for buyers who expect to turn income on sooner rather than later.

Option 2, Future Path GLWB, carries no day-one bonus but applies a 10% compound Deferral Credit to the income base each year for the first ten years, then 5% compound for years 11 through 15, and adds a 20% Income Boost to your payout percentage if you defer at least ten years. This path rewards patience — the longer you wait, the more it separates from Early Path.

For both options, the Deferral Credits stop the moment lifetime income payments begin, and the payout is set as a percentage of the benefit base determined by your age at that point. The rider charge is the same 0.85% either way and is fixed for the life of the contract, so the decision between the two paths comes down almost entirely to how long you realistically plan to defer.

The most meaningful secondary feature is the Enhanced Income Benefit, which is built into the GLWB at no additional charge. If a covered life cannot perform two of six Activities of Daily Living — after a one-year wait and a 90-day elimination period — the lifetime income payments increase to 200% for a single life or 150% for a joint life, for up to five years or until the Contract Value is exhausted. This is a real, no-cost enhancement that gives the product a light care-planning dimension. It is not long-term-care insurance, and the doubled payments run only until the account value runs dry, but as a free feature layered onto an income rider you were buying anyway, it adds genuine value for buyers worried about future care costs.

This annuity is built for long-term retirement dollars, not short-term cash. After the first contract anniversary, you can take up to 10% of the Contract Value each year free of charge. Anything above that during the ten-year schedule is subject to a withdrawal charge that starts at 9% and grinds down to 1% in year ten, and a Market Value Adjustment (MVA) also applies — an interest-rate-linked tweak that can raise or lower your surrender proceeds depending on where rates have moved since you bought. Required minimum distributions are handled well: RMDs can be taken free of charges or MVA starting in the first contract year, count toward your free-withdrawal amount in later years, and are not treated as excess withdrawals once lifetime income payments have begun. Even with those provisions, this is not a contract to buy with money you might need in a hurry, and taking withdrawals above the free amount before you activate income will reduce the very income base the whole product is built around.

The headline cost is the 0.85% annual GLWB rider charge. Two details make it more favorable than most income riders. First, at 0.85% it sits below the roughly 1.0%-to-1.25% range common on built-in income riders — the anchor-quality peers frequently charge 1.10%. Second, the rate is fixed for the life of the contract, so it cannot be raised on you later. The nuance to understand: the fee is calculated on the Income Benefit Base but deducted from your Contract Value. As the benefit base grows through the roll-up, the dollar amount of the fee grows with it — yet it is pulled from your real account value, which is already growing slowly under low caps. That combination is the quiet drag on this contract: you are spending genuine cash to inflate a number you can only access as income. The materials do not disclose a separate annual base-contract fee beyond the rider charge, so I would treat the rider fee as the main explicit cost and ask for written confirmation that there is no additional product fee. The larger tradeoff is structural — the 4.50% S&P cap and 2.00% fixed rate (snapshots as of 4/27/2026 that reset annually) tell you plainly that the growth engine exists to support the guarantees, not to compete with an accumulation FIA.

Legal Entity: Talcott Resolution Life and Annuity Insurance Company

Parent: Sixth Street

A.M. Best Rating: A-

Talcott Resolution is a dedicated annuity carrier now backed by Sixth Street, a large investment firm. The A- rating from A.M. Best sits at the "Excellent" tier — solid, but a notch below the A+ carriers some buyers anchor to, which is worth weighing on a 10-year contract whose whole value depends on the insurer honoring guarantees decades out.