Transamerica Life GROWSafe^® Funds

If you purchased Transamerica Life's original GROWSafe^® funds you own a very valuable investment. The market turmoil since the year 2000 saw many investors loosing large chunks of their investment capital. While your Transamerica Life GROWSafe^® funds dropped in value like most other funds, you had exclusive maturity guarantees that helped mitigate any losses you might have suffered. The following information about GROWSafe^® funds will help you understand what you have.

Sales of original GROWSafe^® funds ceased March 1, 2001. Transamerica Life Insurance Company made the decision to "cap" this group of funds, effective March 1, 2001 and they will not accept new applications, additional deposits or new pre-authorized chequing plans. Existing pre-authorized chequing plans are allowed to continue but monthly amounts cannot be increased. In the event that a pre-authorized chequing plan is stopped, it cannot be re-started at a later date.

It is easy to become confused as to what are the correct funds that apply to your particular investment contract. Transamerica Life has launched three new series of funds since the original GROWSafe^® funds. Should you wish to make any changes to your GROWSafe^® policy or policies by transferring to other funds, without affecting any of the guarantees, you should make these changes only within the funds that comprise the original GROWSafe^® family of funds. If you transfer to a fund outside the original family of funds, you risk loosing the rich maturity and death guarantees and reset rights that belong to your policy.

Please refer to your Transamerica Life semi-annual statement to make certain that any changes you consider are made within the proper fund choices relating to your particular contract. Your statement will show you whether your contract is a GSF 94, GSF 97 or GSF 99. Refer to the chart below to find the proper fund code for the funds that are within your family of funds.

As of December 8, 2003, the Canadian 60 Index Fund, U.S. 500 Index Fund, U.S. 21st Century Index Fund, European 100 Index Fund and the Japanese 225 Index Fund were discontinued and existing investments in those funds were reallocated into the Global Growth Fund.

The discontinued U.S. 500 Index Fund, U.S. 21st Century Index Fund, European 100 Index Fund and the Japanese 225 Index Fund were currency-exposed funds. Since 2003 currency fluxuations have worked against returns from these international investments. Their reallocation into the Global Growth Fund currency neutral fund removed the element of short-term currency fluctuations. This discontinuance and reallocation did not affect the guarantees, maturity, or deferred sales charge schedule of the existing policies.

If you previously had several policies with different index funds in each one, it is possible that you have now ended up with the same Global Growth Fund in each of your policies. A possible better balancing of your investments might be to choose a different qualifying fund from the list below for each of those policies.

Original GROWSafe^® policies were and still are unique investment vehicles in the marketplace. Besides having a wide choice of investments to choose from, they have the best guarantees of any segregated funds. No other life insurance company ever offered a group of segregated funds with 100% guarantees on maturity and death. GROWSafe^® 94 policies allowed unlimited resets of policy values. GROWSafe^® 97 policies allowed up to 6 resets of policy values each year. GROWSafe^® 99 policies allowed up to 2 resets of policy values each year. The resets allow you to increase the amount of your investment under the 100% guarantee, although each reset does push forward your maturity date so that maturity is always 10 years from the date of the last reset. Hopefully your reset dates are early in the year 2010 because this means your last reset was early in the year 2000 when markets were at their peak.

Do you have a clear understanding of your GROWSafe^® maturity guarantees? There are two maturity dates. One is the deposit maturity date on which the 10 year guarantee applies. On the deposit maturity date, Transamerica Life will top-up any difference between the market value and the guarantee value of the policy. If you have a non-registered policy, the top-up for the maturity guarantee would be taxable as a capital gain. If you have a registered policy, taxation is not a consideration. At deposit maturity, you have the option of continuing your policy thus beginning a new 10-year guarantee period or you could choose to redeem the funds and take or transfer the proceeds. The other maturity date that applies to your policy is the contract maturity date which is when your policy actually expires.

The death claim top-up is called a mortality gain and is not taxable. However the top-up for the maturity guarantee in a non-registered policy would be taxable as a capital gain.

An example of a maturity benefit might be the following: Your semi-annual statement says that your market value today is $10,000 and your maturity value on March 5th in the year 2010 is $35,000. This means that Transamerica Life guarantees to increase the value of your investment policy to $35,000 on March 5th, 2010. There are absolutely no deductions of MERs [expenses] between now and then. You are flat out going to have $35,000.

IMPORTANT NOTE: You should know that if you have chosen a successor annuitant for any of your GROWSafe^® policies, you have effectively short circuited the 100% death benefit guarantee. By choosing a successor annuitant, there is no guaranteed death benefit and your investment simply transfers to the person you have named at the same market value as was calculated on the day of your death. By choosing beneficiary only, the guaranteed death benefit, which invariably is much more money, would be transferred to your beneficiary. If your beneficiary is your spouse, you would guarantee that he or she would receive the most amount of money without penalty. You should examine your original applications relating to your Transamerica Life investment policies to make certain that you have not chosen this option. If you have, you should discuss changing it with your advisor right now.

WARNING: Do not allow anyone, advisors or otherwise, to convince you to transfer your investment funds from the family of GROWSafe^® funds listed below to any other investment type until you are satisfied that you have received all of the guaranteed moneys that you are entitled to. There have been incidents of financial advisors who do not understand the Transamerica Life GROWSafe^® guarantees, advising policy holders to move their investments to other types of investments. Once you have given up your guarantees by moving elsewhere, no matter how much money you have lost and how much you cry, there is no going back.

If you decide to keep your GROWSafe^® policy intact after the deposit maturity date, then you can choose from the selection of funds below. Keep in mind that there probably never will be another investment on the market with the kind of guarantees that you currently have in your Transamerica Life policies.

In the fund chart below, ISC stands for Initial Sales Charge which is a negotiable client fee of up to 5.0% of the amount invested. DSC stands for Deferred Sales Charge to the new policy holder which if the policy holder cashed out in the first year of purchase would be a 6.0% surrender charge but each year of ownership would reduce the surrender charge so that at the end of 6 years, the charge would be 0%.

Current GROWSafe^® fund values may be obtained daily by clicking here

Subject to the applicable death and maturity guarantees, any part of the premium or other amount that is allocated to a segregated fund is invested at the risk of the contract holder and may increase or decrease in value according to fluctuations in the market value of the assets in the segregated fund.

Segregated Funds are only available to Canadian residents. Persons resident or located in other countries are not eligible to purchase these products or associated services. Within Canada, the information on this web site is not intended to be construed as an offer to sell any insurance products in the province of Quebec.

Copyright © 1997 - 2007 After Taxes
All rights reserved.
The names "Transamerica", "GrowSafe", GROWSafe^2®, GROWSafe^3® and Imaxx are federally registered trademarks and service marks of the Transamerica Corporation.
This web site designed & maintained by The Dogwood Mall