July 2026 Annuity Rates Report

AnnuityRatesHQ's multi-year guaranteed annuity (MYGA) rate indexes were close to flat in July 2026. Across the seven guarantee terms we track, month-over-month moves ranged from −1 bps to +6 bps through July 17, 2026. The largest was the 10-year index, which firmed +6 bps to 5.37%. In plain terms: guaranteed annuity rates held the ground they had gained earlier in the year rather than extending or giving it back.

Short and long behaved a little differently. The 2-year index was unchanged at 4.29%, and the 6-year slipped a single basis point to 4.95%, while every term from three to ten years held steady or edged higher: the 3- and 5-year indexes each added +3 bps — to 4.69% and 4.98% — the 7-year rose +2 bps to 4.93%, and the 10-year led at 5.37%. Five of the seven terms finished the month higher, one was flat, and one was down a basis point.

For someone shopping a multi-year guaranteed annuity, a flat month is itself useful information. With rates near the top of their recent range, there is little penalty for taking a few weeks to compare carriers and terms and little reward for rushing. It also means the gap between the 2-year and 10-year index — about 1.08 percentage points — remains wide, so committing to a longer guarantee continues to pay a visible premium over the shortest terms. Put differently, the shape of the curve is doing more work for a buyer this month than the size of the moves: the reward for accepting a longer term is larger than the reward for trying to time the next tick.

None of this is a forecast. These indexes are the average guaranteed rate across every marketed product we observe at each term in the CANNEX-backed feed, not a single headline rate, and the best available offers sit well above the average — the top 5-year MYGA in this month's data pays 7.45%. Averages move slowly because they blend hundreds of products, so a quiet month at the index level can still contain meaningful moves at individual carriers. That is exactly why the shopping comparison matters more than the monthly headline.

One practical note on how to read these numbers. Because the index is an average, it lags the sharpest promotions and smooths out one-off specials; it is best used to gauge the direction and the rough level of the market, not to price a specific contract. When it is time to shop, the underlying term pages list the individual carriers and rates behind each average, and the highest available rate — not the average — is what a buyer can actually lock.

On the index-linked side, the picture was similarly steady. The average cap on a one-year S&P 500 point-to-point fixed index annuity (FIA) was 12.53% across six carriers. The average uncapped participation rate was 33.95%, across seven carriers. The average performance-trigger rate was 6.27%, across nine carriers. We keep those crediting methods in separate cohorts and never blend them into one "FIA rate," because a cap, a participation rate, and a trigger are not comparable numbers. A trigger, for instance, pays a fixed, pre-set rate whenever the index finishes flat or higher, which is why its average sits well below a cap and should never be read against one.

These figures come from 66 annuity carriers and 534 products tracked through CANNEX and refreshed daily, dated to July 17, 2026 — 63 carriers on the MYGA side and 51 on the fixed index side. Where a feed is unavailable for a metric, we omit it rather than estimate: this month, the significant rate-change velocity series was not available, so it is left out here rather than filled with a placeholder. Every number on this page reproduces from a snapshot frozen on the report date and will not silently update as later data arrives.

The question heading into next month is whether guaranteed rates can hold these levels. Carriers reprice their MYGA and FIA books off their own reinvestment yields, so the direction of intermediate bond yields tends to set the next move more than any single headline. For now, buyers are looking at a market that has stopped falling and steadied near multi-month highs, with the longest terms still paying the widest premium. Readers who want to follow the month as it develops can watch the live Annuity Rate Index and the statistics hub between editions; this page is the dated, monthly record of where things landed. We will refresh it each month as the data changes.