Mountain Life Secure Summit Annuity

As of January 2026, Mountain Life Insurance Company’s AM Best Financial Strength Rating is B- (Fair) with a Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of “bb-” (Fair), and both ratings have been placed Under Review with Developing Implications. This represents a significant development from the prior B+ (Good) with Stable outlook that was assigned in February 2025. The January 2026 downgrade and Under Review status were triggered by three concurrent concerns identified by AM Best: pending litigation between the holding company’s ultimate controlling party (MEM Capital LLC) and other shareholders over company ownership; elevated financial leverage and high interest expense within the holding structure; and an enterprise risk management program that AM Best assessed as marginal — not evolved sufficiently to match the increased risk profile of the company since its August 2024 acquisition. The Under Review with Developing Implications designation means the rating could be further revised — upward or downward — as the litigation resolves and AM Best reassesses the resulting ownership and capital structure. B- is below the B threshold and significantly below the A- (Excellent) minimum that most independent financial advisors require as a floor for long-term annuity placements. Buyers who weight carrier financial strength heavily as a selection criterion should compare Secure Summit against A-rated MYGA alternatives — where competitive rates are available from carriers with substantially stronger balance sheet assessments — before committing funds to Mountain Life for a multi-year term.

This is one of the most important mechanical distinctions in the Secure Summit contract that buyers — particularly those considering the shorter guarantee period options — must understand before purchasing. In many MYGA products, the surrender schedule matches the guarantee period exactly: a 5-year MYGA has a 5-year surrender schedule that reaches zero at the end of the 5-year guarantee period. In the Secure Summit, the surrender schedule runs the full contract term rather than matching the guarantee period in all cases. On shorter-duration term elections such as 2-year or 3-year guarantee periods, the surrender schedule may extend beyond the guarantee period. This means a buyer who selects a 2-year rate guarantee may still face surrender charges if they want to access more than the 5% free withdrawal amount after the 2-year guarantee period ends — the surrender schedule, not the guarantee period, defines the penalty-free full access date. Buyers considering the 2-year or 3-year Secure Summit options should treat the full surrender schedule — confirmed from the current product disclosure or illustration, not the guarantee period length — as the actual holding-period commitment. For the 5-year through 10-year term elections, buyers should also verify whether the surrender schedule aligns with the guarantee period or extends beyond it, and confirm this before application.

The Secure Summit base contract provides 5% annual free withdrawal beginning in year two — lower than the 10% that many competing MYGA carriers offer throughout the surrender period. This is a structural product characteristic of Mountain Life’s MYGA design rather than a feature that can be adjusted within the base contract. The practical impact depends entirely on how much annual access you expect to need during the guarantee period. For clients whose anticipated annual withdrawal needs are modest — small distributions for supplemental expenses, interest income as a cash flow tool, or RMD amounts that happen to fall below 5% of contract value — the 5% base provision may be sufficient. For clients who anticipate needing annual access of more than 5% of contract value, the base Secure Summit structure requires more careful planning: either keeping those funds outside the annuity in more liquid vehicles, electing the optional 10% Free Withdrawal Rider or the RMD Free Withdrawal Rider (at the cost of a 0.25% rate reduction), or choosing a competing MYGA product that offers 10% annual free withdrawal without a rate penalty. Before purchasing the Secure Summit for any client who may need annual access during the guarantee period, comparing the effective yield of the Secure Summit base rate against a competing 10% free withdrawal MYGA at a slightly lower rate — net of the actual withdrawal impact — is the most precise way to evaluate which structure is truly better for that client’s specific liquidity profile.

The decision between the two optional riders — and whether to elect either at all — comes down to a direct comparison of the value of expanded liquidity against the guaranteed rate reduction. Both riders cost a 0.25% permanent reduction to the base guaranteed interest rate for the full contract term. For a $100,000 contract at a 5.50% base rate over 7 years, the difference between the base rate and the rider rate is approximately $175 per year in interest — and over 7 years of compounding, that reduction compounds to a meaningful dollar difference in the ending accumulation value. The RMD Free Withdrawal Rider, available for qualified (IRA) accounts, waives surrender charges and MVA on the greater of the calculated RMD or 10% of the prior-year accumulation value. It is most valuable for clients where the annual RMD amount is expected to exceed 5% of the contract value — situations where the base free withdrawal provision is insufficient to cover the full RMD without triggering charges. The 10% Free Withdrawal Rider, for non-qualified accounts, increases the annual penalty-free access from 5% to 10%. It is most valuable for clients who anticipate consistent annual withdrawals in the 5% to 10% range for income supplementation or other purposes. For clients whose RMDs are expected to be modest relative to the contract value, or whose non-qualified withdrawal needs are expected to stay below 5%, electing neither rider and maintaining the full base rate is typically the better choice.

The Secure Summit nursing home waiver has one notable structural difference from many competing MYGA products: it requires a confinement of at least 30 consecutive days at the time of surrender, rather than the 90 consecutive days that is more common in the MYGA market and in FIA nursing home waiver designs. The 30-day confinement requirement means a qualifying nursing home stay, hospital stay, or hospice placement of just 30 days triggers the waiver — a lower threshold than the 90-day standard used by Ceres Life, Investors Heritage, Talcott, and most other carriers reviewed in this session. The waiver covers not just nursing homes but also qualifying hospice care and hospital stays, which adds additional breadth compared to carriers that limit their confinement waiver strictly to nursing facility placement. The terminal illness waiver applies when the owner is diagnosed with a terminal illness with a life expectancy of 12 months or less. Both waivers are subject to specific rider terms and state availability. One important tax point: even when the nursing home or terminal illness waiver applies, distributions from a qualified annuity contract are still subject to ordinary income taxation in the year of distribution — the waiver eliminates the surrender charge and MVA, but not the tax obligation on any gains distributed from a traditional IRA or other pre-tax qualified account.

At the end of the guarantee period, the Secure Summit contract automatically renews into a new contract of the same term length and guarantee period at the rate declared by Mountain Life at the time of renewal. This automatic renewal begins a new rate period at whatever rate Mountain Life offers at that time — which may be higher or lower than the original guaranteed rate depending on prevailing interest rate conditions. There is a 30-day window at the start of each one-year renewal period during which you may take a partial or full surrender without being subject to surrender charges or a Market Value Adjustment. This 30-day window is the primary penalty-free exit point each renewal cycle — missing it and defaulting into a new renewal period without making an active decision means accepting the new declared rate for another period and starting the MVA clock for that period. The practical recommendation is to treat the end of each guarantee period as a scheduled calendar event: calendar a review approximately 60 days before the guarantee period ends, confirm the renewal rate being offered by Mountain Life, compare it against current market rates from competing MYGA carriers, and make an active decision rather than allowing automatic renewal by default. The 30-day window is valuable flexibility that disappears once the new renewal period begins.

The Secure Summit can structurally support IRA rollovers — it accepts Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, and SEP IRA transfers and rollovers without triggering a taxable event, and the optional RMD Free Withdrawal Rider provides meaningful RMD compatibility for clients already subject to required minimum distributions. The structural fit for IRA money is not the primary concern. The primary concern for evaluating a Secure Summit IRA rollover as of mid-2026 is the carrier’s current AM Best status: B- (Fair), Under Review with Developing Implications. An IRA rollover into a MYGA is typically a commitment of years — and placing long-horizon retirement savings with a carrier whose ownership is in active litigation and whose rating is under review introduces carrier risk that was not present when the product was offered at B+ (Good) with a Stable outlook. For clients who are specifically attracted to the Mountain Life rate and the Secure Summit product features, a reasonable planning framework is: limit the allocation to an amount within state guaranty association coverage limits, compare the net rate advantage of Secure Summit against A-rated MYGA alternatives at the same term to determine whether the rate differential justifies the carrier risk differential at the buyer’s specific allocation size, and revisit the carrier rating status before finalizing any application to confirm whether the Under Review designation has been resolved. Diversified Insurance Brokers will provide current rate comparisons across all 75+ carriers — including A-rated alternatives — alongside any Secure Summit illustration.

The Secure Summit’s term menu of 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 years is unusually broad for the MYGA market. Most MYGA carriers offer 3-, 5-, and 7-year terms as their standard menu, sometimes adding a 10-year option. The 6-year, 8-year, and 9-year terms in particular are difficult to find elsewhere in the market — most competing products force buyers to choose between 7 and 10 years if they want a term in that range. The 2-year term adds a near-term option for buyers who want an extremely short guaranteed rate period, though as noted elsewhere, buyers selecting the shorter terms should carefully confirm the full surrender schedule before purchasing, since the surrender period may extend beyond the 2- or 3-year guarantee period. The availability of 6-year, 8-year, and 9-year terms can be genuinely useful for buyers who want to coordinate the MYGA maturity with a specific real-world event — a retirement date, a Social Security claiming age, a pension start, or a planned property sale — that falls in those years and does not align neatly with the standard 5- and 7-year options offered by competing carriers. This term flexibility is a genuine product differentiator that, alongside competitive rates, explains why Secure Summit appears on independent rate comparison tables alongside carriers with stronger financial strength ratings.