American Equity Investment Life Insurance CompanyReviews of american-equity.com

Stay Away, Stay Very Far Away from this Company. I feel they have robbed me of over $20,000.00 . I started a retirement annuity back in 2013 with over $85,000.00 invested. I started receiving monthly disbursements in 2021 of almost $500.00 a month. In December of 2025 the checking account of where my monthly disbursements was going was hacked. I contacted American Equities and requested they send my monthly disbursement to a new account. That's all I wanted, nothing else. American Equities sent me the wrong form and they reassessed the value of my account as of 2025. They canceled my monthly disbursement of almost $500 and began sending me a monthly disbursement of only $218.00 based on its current value. They cut my meager disbursement by 57%. I feel I was robbed by AMERICAN EQUITIES and strongly advise anyone considering using their services DON"T, absolutily DO NOT. Walk away as fast as you can.

Performance on my investment which was an Annuity Roth IRA was flat. Because of the poor growth over 6 years, I could no longer justify leaving it in there and had to accept the penalty to transfer into a new Roth IRA. The penalty cost me approximately a 7% loss over my principal investment over the 6 years while maxing out my Roth contributions, (do the math.) The agent that convinced me to pursue this 6 years ago bailed out of his Annuity with AE and took the penalty a year before I did.

Horrible horrible worst investment of my money I have ever made ,,the broker flat out lied to me ,,the company lies ,,and they try and confuse you about what is happening in your account,,,and try to convince you you are stupid,,I have other accounts,, I am not stupid

The sales information of these annuities are not really clear. The salesman talks on and on like you understand. The printed material is even worse. This is the worse Annuity I have ever bought and I have several with other companies. This company just sells and does not care after that. Stay away. Buy fixed annuities from other companies.

I feel like I was sold a bill of goods. Fourteen years ago, I invested $20,000 in the company’s annuity. Today, after all that time, my account balance is still only about $21,000, with a surrender value of just $19,000. If I were to start taking payments now at age 70, my annual payout would be only $1,900—about $155 per month. That means it would take me ten full years just to recoup my original investment. I wouldn’t even begin to receive any true “interest income” until age 80. At that point, I would have had my money tied up for 24 years before seeing any return. I’m not sure how many years beyond 80 I’ll even be around to benefit. Overall, it’s been an absolutely terrible financial instrument for me. My only advice: RUN if anyone suggests investing in an annuity.

Just awful. Just buy CDs.

American Equity is extremely unethical. My mom bought a policy in 2021. We have been working for over a month now to get the funds transferred to Fidelity. We've gotten nothing but lies and push back from American Equity. The funds have been missing since February 5th.

I took a 2 year annuity out with 110 k from a retirement account I had to move. All I heard about from the con man how sold it to me was how much money I was going to make. Fast forward to now. I haven't made 1 dime in 2 years and the economy has been pretty good. Theses dumbasses could not even make up the 1 percent fee up. Big rip off do not get mixed up with American equity!!!