Trellis Financial Perennial 10 Fixed Indexed Annuity

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Understanding this contract requires holding one structural idea in your head from the beginning, and everything else follows from it. The Perennial 10 tracks two separate values. Your contract value is your actual money — it earns interest, it can be surrendered, and it passes to your beneficiaries. Your benefit base is a calculation figure that exists only to determine your income; it has no cash value and cannot be withdrawn as a lump sum. The headline features of this product — a substantial day-one bonus and a meaningful annual roll-up — apply to the benefit base. They make your income larger. They do not make your account larger. That is not a flaw and it is not hidden, but it is the thing most buyers misunderstand, and if you want the full treatment of why it matters, our review of whether Trellis Financial is a good insurance company covers the carrier and the two-value structure in depth.

This page is about the product itself: how the income engine is built, what the contract actually pays at each possible starting point, how to think about the central decision of when to turn income on, how single and joint income differ, what the enhanced income feature does when health changes, how the growth side works, and the complete picture of access, costs, and legacy. Our aim is that you finish this page able to read a Perennial 10 illustration critically, ask the right questions about it, and know whether it belongs in your retirement plan or whether something else fits you better.

The Three Engines That Build Your Income

Your income from a Perennial 10 is the product of two numbers: your benefit base and a withdrawal percentage tied to your age. The benefit base is where most of the product design lives, and it grows in three distinct ways.

The day-one benefit base bonus. On the date your contract takes effect, the benefit base is set to your premium plus a bonus equal to 34% of that premium. This happens immediately, before any waiting period, before any interest is credited, before anything else. Your income calculation begins at 134% of what you deposited. For a product whose selling point is fast income, this is the single most important feature — the bonus applies in full whether you start income in thirty days or in ten years, so a buyer who wants income almost immediately captures the entire benefit of it. Bonus features always come with trade-offs built elsewhere into the contract, and our overview of bonus annuity pros and cons explains what to look for; in this contract the trade-offs are the ten-year surrender schedule and the annual income charge, both covered below.

The roll-up. After issue, the benefit base grows at a rate of 10% of your initial premium each year, credited daily rather than in an annual lump. It continues for up to ten years, or until you begin lifetime withdrawals, whichever comes first. Two technical points matter here. First, because the credit is calculated on your initial premium rather than on the growing benefit base, this is simple growth, not compound growth — each year adds an identical dollar amount. A 10% simple roll-up is a strong rate and we are not diminishing it, but it is materially different from 10% compounding, and anyone who describes it as compound is describing the contract incorrectly. Second, because crediting is daily, even a short deferral earns a proportional share; waiting six months earns roughly half a year’s roll-up rather than nothing.

The step-up. On every contract anniversary before income begins, if your contract value has grown beyond your benefit base, the benefit base automatically resets upward to match it. No election is required. The one exception is that the step-up is unavailable in a contract year during which excess withdrawals were taken. In practice this feature is unlikely to trigger — the day-one bonus puts the benefit base so far ahead that index crediting would need to be extraordinary to catch it — so treat the step-up as genuine but improbable upside rather than a planning assumption.

Put the bonus and roll-up together and you get a formula you can run yourself: benefit base equals premium multiplied by one, plus 0.34, plus 0.10 for every year of deferral. Defer the maximum ten years and the benefit base reaches 234% of premium. Start after two years and it is 154%. Start after thirty days and it is roughly 135%. We have reconciled this formula against the product’s published income figures at every issue age and every deferral period, and it holds to the dollar — which means you can verify any illustration placed in front of you rather than taking it on trust. That is a rare and useful thing for a consumer to be able to do, and it is worth doing.

The Central Decision: When to Turn Income On

Illustrative figures assume a $100,000 single premium, single-life payout, issue age 65. Your actual income depends on your age, premium, and payout election. Product features are current and subject to change on newly issued contracts.

This table contains the most important strategic decision in the product, so it is worth reading carefully rather than skimming. Waiting increases your income through two separate mechanisms working together: the benefit base grows by ten percent of premium annually, and your withdrawal percentage rises as you age. Both push the payment upward, which is why the ten-year figure looks so much better than the thirty-day figure.

But waiting has real costs that the table’s right-hand column only hints at. Every year you defer is a year of income you did not receive, and that forgone income is money you had to fund from somewhere else. The roll-up stops permanently at ten years, so deferral beyond that point adds nothing to the base. The income charge is deducted from your contract value the entire time you wait, steadily reducing the money that would otherwise pass to your beneficiaries. And the entire calculation assumes you live long enough to collect — deferring income for a decade is a bet on longevity, and while that bet is often reasonable, it should be made consciously.

The honest analysis is that the Perennial 10 is at its most competitive in the short-deferral window, not the long one. That may sound counterintuitive given that longer deferral produces a bigger number, but the comparison that matters is not against this product’s own longer-deferral figures — it is against what other products would pay you for the same waiting period. A contract that front-loads a large bonus and permits income in thirty days is doing something unusual and valuable. A contract producing income after a full ten-year wait is competing against a much wider field, including deferred income annuities that carry no ongoing charge at all. Matching the product to your actual timeline is the whole exercise, and our guidance on choosing an annuity based on your retirement timeline works through that comparison systematically.

How Age Drives Your Withdrawal Percentage

The second half of the income equation is the lifetime withdrawal percentage, determined by your attained age at the moment income begins. Income annuities universally pay higher percentages to older owners because the expected payout period is shorter, and the Perennial 10 follows that pattern across a wide eligible range.

The percentages begin in the mid-four-percent territory for the youngest owners eligible to activate income and climb steadily with each year of age, moving through the five-percent band in the early sixties, the six-percent band in the late sixties and early seventies, the seven-percent band in the mid-to-late seventies, and into the eight-percent band from around age eighty onward, continuing to increase into the highest ages. The progression is smooth rather than stepped, so each additional year of age adds meaningfully to the percentage.

Income becomes available once the owner has reached age fifty, which is early by industry standards, though the contract itself can be issued from age forty. In practice the applicants who benefit most are those in their sixties and seventies, where the withdrawal percentage is high enough to produce substantial income and the shorter remaining time horizon makes the front-loaded bonus especially valuable relative to products that require long deferral.

The interaction between the two engines is what produces the final number, and it is worth being explicit about it: your income equals your benefit base multiplied by your withdrawal percentage. Both grow as you wait. That is why a ten-year deferral produces so much more than a thirty-day one — you are compounding two independent increases. It is also why comparing this product against alternatives requires modeling your specific age and timeline rather than reading a marketing sheet, since the relative advantage shifts substantially depending on where you sit.

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Single Life Versus Joint Life

When you activate income you elect either a single-life payout covering you alone or a joint-life payout covering you and your spouse. The mechanics of the choice are straightforward but the consequences are significant, and couples frequently make this decision too quickly.

Electing joint income reduces your withdrawal percentage by half a percentage point, and — critically — the percentage is based on the younger spouse’s attained age rather than yours. For couples close in age, that reduction is modest and the protection is usually worth it. For couples with a meaningful age gap, the effect compounds: you take the half-point reduction and you calculate off the younger age, which carries a lower percentage to begin with. A husband of seventy-two with a wife of sixty-two does not calculate off seventy-two; he calculates off sixty-two, minus half a point.

What you buy for that reduction is genuine and should not be dismissed. Joint income continues in full for as long as either spouse lives. If the primary owner dies first, the surviving spouse keeps receiving the same payment rather than watching the income stop at the worst possible moment. For a couple where one spouse would face genuine hardship without that income, joint election is often the correct answer even at a materially reduced payment, because the purpose of the contract is security rather than maximum first-year income.

The analysis that resolves this properly compares total expected lifetime income under both elections given both spouses’ ages and health, alongside what other income sources the survivor would retain. It is a real calculation, not a preference, and it is worth running before you elect rather than after — the election is not something you can revisit later. Our overviews of how joint lifetime income annuities work and of joint income annuities for spouses cover the trade-off in more depth.

The Enhanced Income Feature

The Perennial 10 includes a benefit that can substantially increase your income if your health changes, and it is one of the more thoughtfully designed features in the contract because it targets exactly the moment when retirement expenses tend to spike.

After a three-year waiting period, if you become confined to an eligible nursing home for at least ninety consecutive days, or receive a terminal illness diagnosis carrying a life expectancy of twelve months or less, your lifetime withdrawal amount can be increased. Under a single-life election the payment doubles; under a joint-life election it increases by half. The enhanced payment continues for up to five years, or until your contract value reaches zero, whichever arrives first.

Three limitations deserve honest emphasis. The enhancement is time-limited rather than permanent, so it functions as a bridge through a period of elevated cost rather than a lasting uplift. It ends early if the contract value depletes, which means the enhanced payment is drawing down your account faster while it runs. And it is unavailable in California, where the contract is issued without this feature entirely. Anyone weighing the Perennial 10 partly as a long-term care solution should understand all three constraints and should not treat this benefit as equivalent to dedicated long-term care coverage, which addresses a much broader and longer-duration problem. As a supplementary feature on an income contract you were buying anyway, however, it has real value and costs you nothing extra.

The Growth Side: Crediting Strategies and Allocation

While income is the headline, your contract value is the money that genuinely belongs to you, and how it is credited affects your death benefit, your surrender value, and how long the account sustains itself once income begins.

The contract offers a fixed account crediting a declared rate with interest applied daily and a new rate declared each contract year, alongside several index-linked strategies. The index options use annual point-to-point measurement — comparing the index level at the start and end of each contract year — built on both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100, and each is offered in a cap-limited version and a participation-rate version. There is also a volatility-controlled index strategy offered with a participation rate. You may allocate across strategies and change your allocations each contract year, which gives you genuine flexibility to adjust as conditions change.

Understanding the difference between the two limiting mechanisms is essential to allocating sensibly. A cap rate sets a hard ceiling on credited interest for the year regardless of how far the index rises, which means a cap performs predictably in modest years and leaves substantial gains on the table in strong ones. A participation rate instead credits a defined share of the index gain with no ceiling, so it lags a cap in flat-to-modest years but captures far more in a strong year. The volatility-controlled strategy typically carries a higher participation rate precisely because the underlying index is engineered to move less, so the higher share applies to smaller swings. Neither approach is superior in the abstract; they behave differently in different markets, which is exactly why the ability to allocate across several is useful. Our explanation of how annuities earn interest covers why insurers use these mechanisms instead of charging an explicit fee on the indexed accounts.

Two honest observations about the growth side. The declared caps, participation rates, and fixed rate are set by the carrier and change over time, so any figures quoted to you are current rather than contractually guaranteed for the life of the policy, and confirming them when you apply is essential. More importantly, expectations should be calibrated: in a contract where an income charge is deducted annually from the contract value, the realistic function of index crediting is to offset that charge and slow the account’s decline rather than to build wealth. Your principal is protected — index losses cannot reduce your contract value — but this is not an accumulation vehicle, and a buyer expecting significant growth has misidentified what the product does. Our overview of fixed indexed annuity pros and cons sets realistic expectations for the category generally.

Access, Liquidity, and Required Distributions

The Perennial 10 carries a ten-year surrender schedule, which is a long commitment, but the access provisions inside that period are more accommodating than the schedule alone suggests.

Free withdrawals begin immediately in a limited form. During the first contract year you may withdraw interest earned after the initial thirty days, or your required minimum distribution if the contract is tax-qualified. From the second contract year onward, you may withdraw up to ten percent of your contract value annually without surrender charge, measured as of the prior contract anniversary. That ten percent allowance is standard for the category and covers most routine liquidity needs.

Required minimum distributions receive favorable treatment worth highlighting. RMDs are classified as free withdrawals and can begin immediately on a tax-qualified contract, meaning the surrender schedule does not obstruct your legally mandated distributions. This is a genuinely useful feature for buyers funding the contract with retirement account money, and it removes a complication that catches people out with some annuity contracts. Our overview of how required minimum distributions work explains the broader rules that apply.

Hardship access is available in two defined circumstances. After a ninety-day waiting period, you may withdraw up to the full contract value if you become confined to an eligible nursing home for at least ninety consecutive days, or if you are diagnosed with a terminal illness carrying a life expectancy of twelve months or less. Both provisions carry eligibility conditions — notably, the confinement or diagnosis must occur after the contract effective date rather than existing beforehand — and neither is available in California.

Surrender charges apply to withdrawals beyond the free amount during the ten-year period, beginning in the high single digits and stepping down each contract year until they disappear entirely. California carries a slightly lower schedule. During this period a market value adjustment also applies to any withdrawal subject to a surrender charge, and it can move the amount you receive up or down depending on how interest rates have shifted since your purchase. The adjustment ceases once the surrender period ends. Our explanation of how annuity surrender charges work covers how to plan around them so they never become an issue.

Death Benefit and Legacy

The Perennial 10 includes a death benefit automatically, and its structure carries an implication buyers should understand clearly.

Your beneficiaries receive the full contract value upon your death, and the proceeds pass outside of probate. If your spouse is named as primary beneficiary, spousal continuation is automatically included, allowing your spouse to continue the contract rather than being forced into a distribution.

The critical point is what beneficiaries do not receive: the benefit base. However large that figure has grown through the bonus and roll-up, it exists only to calculate income for a living owner. It has no cash value and is not part of the death benefit. A contract that has been paying income for years will have a contract value substantially reduced by both the income withdrawals and the annual charge, and that reduced figure is what passes to heirs.

This is the correct design for what the product is meant to do, but it means the Perennial 10 is an income instrument rather than a legacy instrument. If leaving a substantial inheritance is a primary goal, this contract will not accomplish it efficiently, and life insurance or a different annuity structure would serve better. If your goal is income for life with whatever remains passing to heirs as a secondary consideration, the design fits your purpose. Our overview of annuity beneficiary death benefits explains how these provisions work across contracts.

Funding the Contract and the Tax Picture

The Perennial 10 accepts a single premium — there are no ongoing contributions — with a minimum of twenty-five thousand dollars and a maximum of two million, with larger amounts considered subject to approval. Issue ages run from forty through eighty. The relatively accessible minimum makes the contract available to a broader range of buyers than some income products.

How you fund it materially affects your tax treatment. If you use qualified retirement money, distributions are generally taxed as ordinary income in full, and required minimum distribution rules apply according to your age — the mechanics are covered in our guide to qualified annuity taxation. If you fund with after-tax money, only the growth portion is taxable and different distribution rules apply. Either way, this is a conversation for your tax advisor with your specific situation in front of them rather than something to determine from general guidance.

If you are funding the Perennial 10 by moving money from an existing annuity, the transaction should be structured as a 1035 exchange to preserve tax deferral. Executed correctly this is straightforward; executed carelessly it can create an unintended taxable event. The more important question in an exchange is whether it is worth doing at all — you have to weigh any surrender charges and market value adjustment on the existing contract against the benefit of the new one, and that arithmetic does not always favor moving. We run that comparison honestly, including reaching the conclusion that you should stay where you are, which happens regularly.

Who This Product Serves Well

The Perennial 10 is a well-constructed contract for a specific buyer, and identifying whether you are that buyer is more useful than any general verdict.

It serves you well if guaranteed lifetime income is your objective and you want it to begin within roughly the next several years. The front-loaded bonus combined with a thirty-day activation window makes this contract unusually strong in short-deferral situations, which is precisely where many retirees actually find themselves. It serves you well if you are in the age range where withdrawal percentages are meaningful, if you can genuinely leave the principal alone for a decade, and if you accept that the money funding this income is not primarily an inheritance. It also serves you well if you want the security of income that continues even after the account is exhausted, since that guarantee is the structural core of the product.

It serves you poorly if you want accumulation, because the income charge and the crediting limits together mean this contract is not designed to grow your account. It serves you poorly if you may need significant liquidity inside ten years beyond the annual free withdrawal. It serves you poorly if maximizing what you leave behind is the priority. And it serves you poorly if you were drawn in by the bonus percentage believing it would be added to your money — in which case the issue is not the product but the explanation you received, and buying on that basis leads to a disappointed owner three years later.

There is also a genuine middle category. Some buyers for whom this product would work would be better served by something else entirely. If you want maximum income and neither liquidity nor a death benefit matters to you, a straightforward immediate annuity frequently produces a higher payment per dollar because it carries no ongoing charge at all. If you want protected growth with income as a later option rather than a certainty, a different indexed design may fit better. The right question is never whether the Perennial 10 is a good product in isolation, but whether it is the best available answer to your specific objective — which is the substance of genuine annuity suitability rather than a compliance formality.

How We Evaluate a Perennial 10 for You

We know this contract in detail — we have verified its income mechanics against its own published figures and can explain every component of it — and that depth is exactly why our recommendation is never automatic.

The process begins with your objective rather than the product. We ask what the money is for, when you need income, what other income sources you have, how much liquidity you need to retain, and what role an inheritance plays in your thinking. Those answers determine whether an income-focused indexed annuity belongs in the conversation at all. When it does, we model the Perennial 10 properly: actual income figures at your age and premium across each realistic starting point, so the wait-versus-start-now decision is made on numbers rather than instinct, along with single-life and joint-life comparisons if you are married. Then we compare it against the field. Because we represent many carriers, we can put the Perennial 10 alongside competing income products and show you which produces more guaranteed income per dollar for your specific age and timeline — which is the only test that matters for an income annuity, and one that a strong headline bonus does not automatically win. We check the surrender schedule against your real liquidity needs, we make sure you understand the two-value structure completely, and we tell you plainly when something else fits better.

Because our compensation does not depend on steering you toward any particular contract, that assessment reflects what we actually find. If the Perennial 10 wins for your situation, we will show you why in numbers. If it does not, we will tell you that just as directly and show you what does. And if you have already been shown a Perennial 10 proposal elsewhere and want an independent read on it, that is exactly what our second-opinion review is for — including the entirely realistic outcome that we confirm the proposal in front of you is a strong one and tell you to proceed.

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