An annuity is income under a contract, not a savings balance
An annuity is not money held in a savings account. The NAIC glossary, checked October 21, 2026, defines an annuity as a contract providing income for a specified period of time, or for the duration of life of a person or persons. A savings account is a balance a household holds. The annuity entry is a contract to provide income. The page does not call that contract a deposit, a wage, or a public-benefit adjustment.
The difference is practical for retirees and near-retirees who are comparing a payment with cash already on hand. Contractual income is received only as the contract provides it. A savings balance is an amount already in an account.
The glossary marks the limit of that wording. Staff in the Research and Actuarial Department develop definitions from various insurance references. Entries represent a common or general use. Another entity may define the same word differently, or a context may make the shown definition inapplicable. It is not an insurer's form and not a statute.
Period and life annuities are income designs
The annuity sentence has three consequences for a household budget.
First, the subject is a contract, not an account. The same glossary describes an admitted company as an insurance company licensed to do business in a state or states. That description places the annuity in the insurance business. It does not say the purchase payment remains a bank deposit in the buyer's name.
Second, the contract provides income over time. The time is a specified period or the duration of life of a person or persons. A period can end on a date while the person is living. A life measure ends or continues with survival. The glossary states both possibilities.
Third, the entry never says the buyer keeps a remaining principal balance. After a payment arrives, that payment is cash received. Amounts not yet paid are still contractual income.
A hypothetical, labeled as illustration only, shows the arithmetic. Assume a fixed $200 at the end of each month for 10 months, all illustrated payments occur, and ignore interest, fees, taxes, death, and any right to alter the contract. Total income scheduled is 10 times $200, or $2,000. After one payment, $200 is received and $1,800 is still scheduled. The unpaid amount is a remaining schedule, not a savings balance available on demand.
The 13-month rule is a start date, not access to cash
The separate entry "Annuities – Immediate Non-variable" means an annuity contract that provides for the fixed payment of the annuity at the end of the first interval of payment after purchase. The interval may vary. Payouts must begin within 13 months.
Fixed applies to this narrower entry. The general annuity definition does not say every payment is fixed, and it does not describe a payment that moves with a market account. A contract that only uses the broad word "annuity" has not, on this evidence, been shown to be immediate or non-variable.
Immediate is a deadline, not same-day cash. The first fixed payment comes at the end of the first interval, and the glossary allows that interval to vary. The requirement is that payouts begin within 13 months of purchase.
Nothing in the waiting period converts the contract into a savings account. The entry does not mention deposit insurance or a savings rate. It times a fixed insurance payment. Purchase money is not defined as a balance the household still holds until month 13.
An annuitant is not simply the account holder
An annuitant is "the beneficiary of an annuity payment, or person during whose life and annuity is payable." The glossary's phrase is compressed, but it identifies the person who receives the payment or the person during whose life it is payable. One person may be both. The definition does not require that.
The receiver records income when a payment is actually paid. On a life contract, the measuring life is separate from that budget entry if the people differ. The glossary does not set death benefits, a spouse's share, or who may change the payee. The payment is not a wage or a government benefit. Once received, it is still contract income, not a savings withdrawal.
What the glossary leaves unset
Fees, taxes, surrender costs, and solvency are not in the fetched definitions, so no household outcome on those points follows. An annual statement is the yearly report filed with each state where an insurer does business, a snapshot of financial condition and significant events. An actuary analyzes probabilities of risk, including premiums and related standards. Those entries do not rate a company or guarantee a payment.
The page is not a Canadian pension or registered-account rulebook. Its state-licensing and annual-statement language belongs to U.S. insurance oversight. The annuity lines do not set cross-border tax results.
New terms, the page says, will be added over time. The text used here is the general-use glossary fetched on October 21, 2026. It is reference language, not a new announcement and not a forecast of income.
Watch the contract against these sentences. It should say whether income lasts for a specified period or a life or lives, who the annuitant is, and whether the form is immediate and non-variable: a fixed payment at the end of the first interval, beginning within 13 months of purchase. A later start can still be an annuity under the broad definition without meeting the 13-month entry. Insurer strength is a separate record, in the annual statement filed with state regulators, not in the glossary's product label.