Clear Spring At a Glance: Rates, Products and Reviews

Compare Clear Spring Annuity Rates

Products Offered by Clear Spring

Similar to many of its competitors, Clear Spring Life is largely focused on fixed index annuities, with several products available.

But the company does branch out, also providing MYGA and immediate annuity options to its customers.

Fixed Index Annuities

Clear Spring offers four different fixed index annuities, each with slight variations that tailor them to the needs of different types of customers.

ClearFlex

One of the company’s main offerings is the ClearFlex® fixed indexed annuity. It’s a fairly straightforward product, focused on providing the flexibility that makes annuities so attractive. It offers a simplified allocation strategy with a flexible premium.

ClearFlex® offers many of the perks and add-ons that are standard to annuities in the industry, such as terminal illness and nursing home riders, along with a 10% penalty-free withdrawal.

Your payments can also be annuitized in a few different ways.

ClearFlex® Annuitization Options

• Lifetime payments
• Lifetime payments with a guaranteed period
• Payments over a set period from five to 20 years
• Joint and last survivor 

ViStar

Your next fixed index annuity option from Clear Spring Life is ViStar. ViStar provides the same standard additional benefits as ClearFlex® (penalty-free withdrawals, nursing home waivers), but focuses specifically on mitigating risk and protecting your initial investment.

ViStar essentially allows you to “invest” without being fully exposed to the risks of the market. A key difference from ClearFlex® is that ViStar is a single premium annuity, meaning you purchase it with a lump-sum payment. It also has an optional lifetime withdrawal rider to provide payments for life.

Highlander

Next up is the Highlander® — another single premium option. The main benefit of Highlander® over Clear Spring’s other annuity options is the ability to earn a 10% bonus on all premiums paid in the first year of the contract.

Highlander® 7

The other version of this product is the Highlander® 7, which is designed to be molded to fit different stages of life. 

The vast majority of annuity products are focused on older customers nearing or in retirement. But if you are younger and interested in the benefits of an annuity, the Highlander® 7 offers you a way to participate.

MYGAs and Immediate Annuities

In addition to its fixed index annuities, Clear Spring Life sells a multi-year guaranteed annuity (MYGA) and a single premium immediate annuity.

Preserve

Its MYGA option is the Preserve, with periods that range from one to 10 years. It’s a pretty standard product compared to the rest of the industry, offering the typical benefits and standards you find in most MYGA products.

Provider

Also offered is the Provider, which is a single premium immediate annuity (SPIA). After you pay your lump sum, you can pick the payout option that best suits your needs. This includes payments for life, payments for a set period, a combination of both or joint and survivor.

It also has a useful cost-of-living disbursement, where your payments can increase by 1% to 15% each year to help combat the impact of inflation. But remember, this isn’t a fixed index annuity where your payments fluctuate or your contract gains value. You simply select the growth schedule you prefer at the start of your contract.

About Clear Spring

Clear Spring Life has been through a few iterations since it was founded in 1985, which may make it a name that you are familiar with. It switched away from Guggenheim Life and Annuity Company to its current moniker in 2022.

It is not a massive company and, while it did sell more than $1 billion in direct premiums in 2022, it is far removed from the behemoths of the industry doing tens of billions in sales.

But a medium size isn’t always a bad thing, and the company is backed by a larger organization. Clear Spring Life is owned by Group 1001, which has about $60 billion in assets under management.

Credit Ratings

Credit ratings for annuity providers can help determine a company’s financial strength and stability — an indication that it will be around to guarantee payments to you in the future. Different rating companies use different scales.

Liberty Bankers Credit Ratings

Rating Company	Credit Rating
AM Best	A-
Fitch	Not Rated
S&P	Not Rated

What Customers Are Saying About Clear Spring

Unlike some other providers, there is not a lot of easily accessible information available on how customers have fared in their experiences with Clear Spring. 

The company did not appear in the 2022 or 2023 editions of the J.D. Power Customer Satisfaction Index Rating and was not mentioned by any of the experts Annuity.org spoke to when researching annuity providers.

This doesn’t necessarily mean Clear Spring Life is not a good option. It just isn’t as large of a provider as some of the other major corporations with annuity arms that dominate the space. The only concern is the company’s NAIC Complaint Index Score, which is notably higher than expected given its market presence.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (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.NAIC Complaint IndexDetermined 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.

NAIC Complaint Index for Clear Spring

All Policy Types	0.12
Individual Annuities Only	1.76

Clear Spring Pros & Cons

As with any annuity provider, there are pros and cons to purchasing an annuity from Clear Spring. One pro is the variety of options available. Clear Spring offers four versions of fixed index annuities, giving you the ability to laser in on the product that makes the most sense for you.

The Highlander® 7 is also one of the few products Annuity.org has encountered that is targeted at younger customers. Additionally, the company provides MYGA and SPIA options.

Another pro to Clear Spring is the amount of readily available information on its products. You don’t have to take the word of an agent on what’s included in a Clear Spring annuity. Its products, general information and in-depth brochures are all available online.

As far as drawbacks, the lack of customer satisfaction makes the company a bit of a wildcard. When working with an agent, they may be able to tell you more about their past experience with Clear Spring.

The company’s A- rating from AM Best is also by no means bad but is behind larger competitors.

Provider Rating Methodology

Annuity.org created a fact-based methodology to analyze the strength, security and reach of different annuity providers. We assessed companies based on their availability, the amount of direct premiums sold, their AM Best Financial Strength Rating and their NAIC Complaint Index score.

Providers received a rating on a five-star scale for each of these categories, with the complaint index and financial strength ratings weighed as the heaviest variables. Then, using a weighted average, each company was assigned an overall star rating.

Annuity.org’s Top-Ranked Providers

Provider	Annuity.org Star Rating
Mass Mutual
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North American
Western & Southern

Our Rating Panel

The Annuity.org editorial team spoke with several different annuity experts to learn more about what is important to customers when searching for a provider and what factors make a company reliable. While Annuity.org designed the methodology, these experts provided feedback during the process and consulted on what factors we should leverage to best help prospective buyers compare providers.