Surrender Rights

Popular in France during the 1940s and with the Iraqi Republican Guard in the 1990s.

In the financial world, surrender rights represent a concept related to life insurance and annuities.

You become convinced you'll live forever. You have a vision after eating a bad kumquat and think that you're the chosen one, destined to live throughout time. The main, near-term takeaway from this revelation: you won't be needing that life insurance you bought.

Luckily, your policy has a surrender clause. The provision means that you can cancel the policy and receive its cash value. You literally surrender the policy (give up your life insurance) and get the amount of cash called for in the contract.

The term applies to annuities as well. Ones with surrender rights can be canceled, with some amount of cash (as stipulated in the contract) getting returned. However, in your case, you think you'll just keep that annuity. After all, its set to pay off for the rest of your life; those actuarials never saw your kumquat vision coming.