At the end of the surrender period, the contract expires. You have to buy a new contract or roll over to it.
Be sure you understand your actual rate; an agent or broker may throw a lot of different terms at you, including all or most of the following:
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The base rate: The interest rate the company pays you the first year
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The bonus rate: The bonus the company adds to the interest rate in the first year
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The current rate: The base rate plus the bonus rate
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The current yield: The interest rate your money will earn over the entire term of the contract if the company does not lower its base rate
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The guaranteed yield: The lowest possible interest rate you can earn
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Renewal rates: The rates after the first year
A table of renewal rates can tell you whether the company has a history of raising, lowering, or maintaining the base interest rates of its single-year guarantee contracts after the first year.
Ask your agent or broker for a renewal rate table, or look up the contract’s interest rate history online. The following figure shows a sample rate table from the Annuity Advantage Web site. (Rate histories are routinely provided to annuity salesmen, but not necessarily to customers.)
A table of fixed annuity rates from the Annuity Advantage Web site.