Annuity type

Variable Annuity (VA)

Market subaccounts inside an insurance wrapper, with optional income riders — flexible, and carrying the family's heaviest fee stack.

Principal: Market value — can lose money
Liquidity: Limited — surrender charges + tax rules
Backed by: Securities product; rider promises rest on the insurer

The decoder

What the quoted number means

A rider "roll-up" rate — not interest on your money

Variable annuity marketing often quotes a number like "6% guaranteed growth" — almost always the roll-up rate on a rider's benefit base, a bookkeeping figure used to calculate future income, not cash you can withdraw. Your actual account value rises and falls with the subaccounts, minus mortality-and-expense charges, fund fees, and rider fees that together commonly run north of 2% a year.

Premiums buy mutual-fund-like subaccounts inside a tax-deferred insurance wrapper. Optional riders bolt on guarantees — lifetime withdrawal benefits, death benefits — each priced as an annual fee against the account.

The wrapper's flexibility is real, and so is the drag: the fee stack compounds against returns every year. The rider math is where quotes mislead; the benefit base the roll-up grows is not money, it is a formula input.

Who it tends to fit: tax-deferred market exposure with optional guarantees.

The honest comparison

Variable vs. a payment stream

A payment stream has no fee stack, no subaccounts, and no formula bases — a schedule, a price, and an estimated yield. It also has none of the VA's market upside or flexibility. The honest framing: a VA is an investment platform with insurance features; a stream is committed fixed income.

What the secondary market pays right now is on our current estimated yields page.

View Available Income Options All Annuity Types

Variable questions

Is the 6% guaranteed growth on a variable annuity real?

It is real as a rider calculation — the benefit base used to set future withdrawal amounts typically grows at that rate — but it is not interest on withdrawable money. Your cash surrender value tracks the subaccounts minus fees. Understanding that distinction is the single most important step in evaluating a VA pitch.

What these assets are, and what they are not

Guaranteed and life-contingent structured settlement payment rights, and lottery payment rights, represent the right to receive factored payments that Pacific Structured Assets purchases and assigns to investors through a court-approved process. They are purchased at a discount to their total scheduled payments.

These payment rights are NOT annuities, NOT insurance products, and NOT securities registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. They are not bank deposits, are not FDIC-insured, and are not protected by any state insurance guaranty association. The industry term “secondary market annuity” refers to these payment rights and does not mean you are purchasing an insurance annuity contract.

You acquire the right to receive the payments, not the underlying annuity. The annuity itself does not change hands. Unlike the original structured settlement annuity, which may be shielded from creditors under applicable law, the assigned payment rights you purchase generally do not carry that creditor or bankruptcy protection.

Assigned annuities, offered as a separate product line, are existing insurance annuity contracts reassigned to a new owner through a change of ownership or an irrevocable change of payee.

These are long-term holdings with limited liquidity, and may not be suitable for every investor. There is no public trading market and no daily price. Resale or reassignment of a payment stream to another buyer may be possible, and Pacific Structured Assets can assist, but a resale is not guaranteed and the price it would bring is not guaranteed. Because the payments are fixed, that resale value moves with prevailing interest rates: an investor could realize a gain if rates have fallen since purchase, or a loss if rates have risen. These holdings are best suited to capital an investor can commit for the long term. Nothing on this website is tax, legal, financial, or investment advice. Consult your own advisors before investing.

Other types: SPIA · DIA · QLAC · MYGA · Fixed deferred · Fixed indexed · RILA

Pacific Structured Assets

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