Fidelity Personal Retirement Annuity Review — 0.25% Fee VA

By Editorial Team

Published April 1, 2026 · Updated May 5, 2026

At 0.25% annually, the Fidelity Personal Retirement Annuity is the cost benchmark that every other variable annuity is implicitly measured against. Here’s what you get — and what you give up.

The variable annuity market is not known for transparency on fees. The industry average mortality and expense charge on non-group open variable annuities has historically run around 1.00–1.38% annually, not counting underlying fund expenses, administrative charges, or optional rider costs that can add another 0.50–1.50% on top. A fully loaded variable annuity with a guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit (GLWB) rider can easily cost 3.00–3.50% per year in total expenses.

Against that backdrop, Fidelity’s Personal Retirement Annuity (FPRA) is genuinely unusual. Its annual annuity charge is 0.25% — and drops to 0.10% for contracts reaching $1 million in value. There are no CDSC (contingent deferred sales charge) periods, no surrender schedule, and no optional riders. It is, as Fidelity markets it, a vehicle for tax-deferred investing and nothing more.

What the FPRA Actually Is

The Fidelity Personal Retirement Annuity is a deferred variable annuity issued by Fidelity Investments Life Insurance Company (FILI), a subsidiary of Fidelity. The contract offers access to a broad range of Fidelity mutual fund subaccounts — equities, bonds, sector funds, target-date funds, and asset allocation funds — inside a tax-deferred insurance wrapper.

The key structural features:

• Annual annuity charge: 0.25% (0.10% above $1M). No administrative fee beyond this.
• Underlying fund expenses: Standard Fidelity mutual fund ERs, typically 0.01%–0.75% depending on the subaccount. Total-cost investors should add this to the base annuity charge.
• No surrender charges: Full liquidity from day one. No CDSC schedule.
• No living benefit riders: No GLWB, no guaranteed minimum accumulation benefit (GMAB), no income riders of any kind. The contract does not offer a guaranteed income stream.
• Standard death benefit: Account value at death, paid to named beneficiaries. No enhanced death benefit option.
• No RMD requirement: Assets inside the FPRA can be deferred past age 73 (traditional IRA RMD age) until the oldest owner reaches age 95 (90 in New York).
• Minimum initial premium:$10,000.

Who It Is and Isn’t For

The FPRA was explicitly designed for a narrow use case: investors who have already maxed out 401(k) and IRA contributions, have significant taxable account assets generating annual tax drag, have a 10+ year time horizon, and want additional tax-deferred growth without paying for insurance features they don’t need.

The product makes mathematical sense in a specific scenario. Consider a high-income investor in a 37% federal bracket holding a $500,000 taxable brokerage account that generates 2% in annual dividends and short-term capital gains. That’s $10,000 per year in taxable income at a $3,700 annual tax cost. Moving those assets into the FPRA defers that taxation, compounding the tax savings over time. At a 0.25% annual annuity charge ($1,250/year at $500,000), the cost of the deferral benefit is less than half the annual tax otherwise owed.

The product is not the right answer for investors who:

• Want guaranteed lifetime income (the FPRA has no income rider).
• Are in lower tax brackets where the tax deferral benefit doesn’t justify even 0.25% in additional costs.
• Are already holding assets in tax-advantaged accounts that generate no current tax drag.
• Need principal protection — the FPRA is a variable product with full market exposure.
• Might need the money within a few years (qualified withdrawals before 59½ trigger the 10% IRS early withdrawal penalty).

The Traditional Variable Annuity: What You’re Actually Buying

Most variable annuities sold through brokers and insurance agents look nothing like the FPRA. The typical broker-sold variable annuity includes:

• Mortality and expense (M&E) charge: 1.00–1.50% annually, depending on share class. This is the carrier’s margin and the source of agent commission. It is charged on total account value regardless of performance.
• Administrative fee: Usually 0.10–0.15% or a flat $30–$50/year.
• CDSC schedule: Typically 5–8 years (B-shares), declining from 7–8% in year one to zero at maturity. Surrender charges offset the upfront commission the broker received.
• Optional riders: GLWB riders (guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit) typically add 0.75–1.25% per year. Enhanced death benefits add another 0.25–0.50%. These are the features most often cited as justification for the product.
• Subaccount expenses: Typically higher than retail mutual fund equivalents. Many VA subaccounts hold the same underlying strategy as a retail share class but charge an additional 0.25–0.50% for the insurance wrapper version.

The Cost Comparison Over Time

The fee differential between the FPRA and a typical broker-sold variable annuity is not trivial over long holding periods. Consider a $300,000 investment held for 15 years with a 7% gross annual return:

Cost Component	FPRA	Typical B-Share VA
Annual annuity/M&E charge	0.25%	1.35%
GLWB rider (if applicable)	N/A	0.95%
Administrative fee	0.00%	0.15%
Average subaccount expense	~0.40%	~0.80%
Total annual cost	~0.65%	~3.25%
Account value at 15 years (net)	~$724,000	~$553,000

The difference — approximately $171,000 on a $300,000 investment over 15 years — reflects entirely fee drag. The FPRA investor who does not need guaranteed income or enhanced death benefits is simply keeping more of their own money.

The Fair Case for Higher-Cost Variable Annuities

The FPRA comparison is not entirely fair to broker-sold products, because it excludes the value of the features the FPRA deliberately omits. A GLWB rider at 0.95% per year on a $300,000 contract costs roughly $2,850 per year — but it also guarantees that the policyholder will receive lifetime income even if the account value drops to zero, based on a guaranteed benefit base that may grow at 6–7% annually during the deferral phase.

For a 55-year-old planning to defer income until age 70, that guarantee may be worth the cost — particularly if the policyholder has no pension, modest Social Security, and limited other sources of guaranteed income. The FPRA cannot replicate that guarantee at any price, because it doesn’t offer it.

The honest framework is this: if you need guaranteed lifetime income from your annuity, the FPRA is the wrong product regardless of its low fees. If you want market exposure with tax deferral and full liquidity and you already have other sources of guaranteed income (Social Security, a pension), the FPRA’s cost structure is very difficult to beat.