About this time last year, when I was looking for a way to access DFA funds via T-C, I was talking with a Regional VP in the T-C Trust Company. He agreed to provide me a recommended portfolio designed to meet my specific need for an inheritance account.
In the course of the discussion the topic of guaranteed return annuities came up and he mentioned that his mother had bought one without asking or telling him about it and he was most displeased as he had a low opinion of them.

We settled on one analogy for them - they are like unhomogonized milk (milk with its full butterfat content and being unhomogonized, the butterfat would float to the top of the milk bottle) in which the cream (butterfat at the top of the bottle) was skimmed off. This came about because of the reasonably well known statistic (which I forget) about the amount of performance that came from a limited number of days iin a year in which the markets went up by a sizable amount. In guaranteed annuities, there is a cap to the amount the annuitant gets on any one day's market performance. Thus the "cream" - the extra performance on a very good day - goes to the fund which provides the guaranteed annuity. I liked the analogy then and I still do now!

Ray