How safe is a transAmerica annuity?

Answer 1

My experience with them has been a nightmare. I signed up for an annuity with a 5% guaranteed growth per year no matter what the market did. However if the market did better than 5% I would reap the benefits. I would not be able to do anything with this money for 7 years. For instance, if you use $200,000 as your initial investment. If the market does bad your annuity value would be $210,000. Pay attention here as you have the option to take a lump sum or an annuity. Taking the lump sum would be the actual cash value. A bad market, say 10% loss and the lump sum value would be $180,000. Everything was fine the first year-bad market but annuity value did increase. Then the market tanked. I received a phone call from my bank telling me I needed to sign some papers which would actually increase my payout, the entire time being reassured everything else was the same. What Transamerica did was switch my policy. They 're-evaluated' my investment at the present value. In other words the dumped the guaranteed growth, knowing how bad the market dropped and knowing they had a losing policy on their hands. The bank has apologized stating they still don't see where in the papers these changes would take place. Transamerica has stead fastly refused to admit any wrong doing and refuses to correct anything. There is much more detail involved but the bottom line is a loss of about $45,000. Needless to say I would not deal with this company, they have some very deceptive practices. DO NOT TRUST THEM.