Clear Spring Life and Annuity Company

Clear Spring’s annuity offerings include four fixed indexed annuities, a multi-year guaranteed annuity and a single premium immediate annuity.

Clear Spring mainly sells fixed indexed annuities, offering three different products of this type.

Clear Spring also offers the Preserve® multi-year guaranteed annuity (MYGA). Customers can purchase this MYGA with guarantee periods from three years to seven years.

Preserve® allows for one free withdrawal of up to 10% of the annuity value each year without penalty. The free withdrawal provision begins in the second contract year.

The MYGA also comes with riders that allow owners to access the full value of the annuity if they are diagnosed with a terminal illness or confined to a nursing home. However, the Nursing Home Care rider is not available in Massachusetts.

Owners can select from several payout options, including period certain, lifetime income or joint life income for two annuitants. The features of Clear Spring’s Preserve® are typical of MYGA offerings throughout the annuity industry.

The Provider® single premium immediate annuity is designed to create a regular income stream in retirement. Customers can choose from a variety of payout guarantees, including certain period, single life, life with period certain, joint and survivor, and joint life with guaranteed period.

The SPIA can be further customized with an optional cost-of-living adjustment benefit. The COLA benefit increases the monthly payments by a set percentage between 1% and 15%. Only contracts with the guarantee period option can be modified with the COLA benefit.

Clear Spring Life and Annuity Company is one brand owned by Group 1001, a financial services conglomerate that also owns annuity providers Delaware Life and Gainbridge. In 2023, Group 1001 served over 950,000 customers, and its combined assets under management totaled $62.6 billion.

In 2023, Clear Spring Life sold over $729 million in individual annuity premiums, representing 0.21% of the U.S. annuity market, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). The company is licensed to sell annuities in 48 states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Clear Spring Life has a decent reputation for financial stability. The company holds an “A-” rating from AM Best, one of the top credit rating agencies. This rating signifies that the company has a strong financial outlook, adequate operating performance and overall excellent financial stability.

The guarantees of annuities are backed by the insurance company’s creditworthiness, so it’s important to check the credit ratings of any annuity provider you consider.

Unfortunately, Clear Spring Life has had some issues with customer satisfaction in recent years. According to the NAIC, five annuity customer complaints were reported to state insurance commissioners in 2023, three in 2022 and one in 2021.

The NAIC tracks the consumer complaints that each state’s insurance commission receives each year. These are used to compile a company’s NAIC Complaint Index.

The index score is calculated by dividing the company’s share of complaints in the U.S. market by the company’s share of premiums in the U.S. market. The National Complaint Index is always 1.00, so a score of 2.00, for example, is twice as high as expected in the market.

These numbers indicate that Clear Spring received significantly more customer complaints than the annuity industry average.

Clear Spring sells a variety of annuity products, but this provider might not be best suited for every annuity customer. It’s important to understand the pros and cons of an annuity company and its products before making a decision.