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Apr. 30, 2021
AZL MVP DFA Multi-Strategy Fund
AZL® MVP DFA MULTI-STRATEGY FUND
Investment Objective
The Fund seeks long-term capital appreciation.  
Fees and Expenses Fees and Expenses of the Fund
The following table describes the fees and expenses that you may pay if you buy and hold shares of the Fund. The Fund is offered only as an investment option for certain Contracts. The table below reflects only Fund expenses and does not reflect Contract fees and expenses. If Contract fees and expenses were included, the fees and expenses in the following table would be higher. Please refer to your Contract prospectus for a description of those fees and expenses.
Annual Fund Operating Expenses (expenses that you pay each year as a percentage of the value of your investment)
Example
This example is intended to help you compare the cost of investing in the Fund with the cost of investing in other mutual funds. The example assumes that you invest $10,000 in the Fund for the time periods indicated. The example also assumes that your investment has a 5% return each year, that the Fund’s operating expenses remain the same, and that you reinvest all dividends and distributions. It does not reflect any Contract fees. It reflects the management fee waiver and expense reimbursement agreements for the first year. If Contract fees were included, the costs shown would be higher. Although your actual costs may be higher or lower, based on these assumptions your costs would be:  
Portfolio Turnover
The Fund pays transaction costs, such as commissions, when it buys and sells securities (or “turns over” its portfolio). A higher portfolio turnover rate may indicate higher transaction costs. These costs, which are not reflected in annual fund operating expenses or in the example, affect the Fund’s performance. During the most recent fiscal year, the Fund’s portfolio turnover rate was 18% of the average value of its portfolio.  
Investments, Risks, and Performance Principal Investment Strategies of the Fund
The Fund is a fund of funds that, under normal market conditions, seeks to achieve its investment objective by investing primarily in a combination of four underlying funds, subadvised by Dimensional Fund Advisors LP (the “Subadviser”):FUNDTARGET ALLOCATION•  AZL DFA Five-Year Global Fixed Income Fund38%•  AZL DFA U.S. Core Equity Fund35%•  AZL DFA U.S. Small Cap Fund10%•  AZL DFA International Core Equity Fund12%In addition, under normal market conditions, the Fund will allocate approximately 5% of its assets to the MVP risk management process, described below.The AZL DFA Five-Year Global Fixed Income Fund is a bond index fund, and the other four underlying funds are equity funds. Therefore, under normal market conditions, the Fund will allocate approximately 60% of its assets in the underlying equity funds and approximately 40% of its assets in the underlying bond fund. These target allocations represent the Fund’s long-term strategic asset allocation, which is not expected to change under normal market conditions.The investment results of the underlying funds will vary. As a result, the Manager monitors the actual allocations to the underlying funds daily and periodically adjusts the actual allocations to attempt to achieve the target allocation. Generally, the Manager will seek to maintain the actual fund allocations to target using the cash flows that result from shareholders buying or selling shares in the Fund. However, if cash flows were insufficient to maintain the target allocations, the Manager would then buy or sell underlying funds as necessary to attempt to return the Fund’s actual asset allocations to the targets. Generally, the actual allocations will not be more than 10% above or below the targets.AZL DFA Five-Year Global Fixed Income Fund seeks to provide a market rate of return for a fixed income portfolio with low relative volatility of returns, and seeks to focus the eligible universe on securities with relatively less expected upward or downward movement in market value. The fund seeks to achieve its investment objective by generally investing in a universe of U.S. and foreign debt securities maturing in five years or less. The fund primarily invests in obligations issued or guaranteed by the U.S. and foreign governments, their agencies and instrumentalities, corporate debt obligations, bank obligations, commercial paper, repurchase agreements, obligations of other domestic and foreign issuers, securities of domestic or foreign issuers denominated in U.S. dollars but not trading in the United States, and obligations of supranational organizations. At the present time, the Subadviser expects that most investments will be made in the obligations of issuers which are in developed countries. The fixed income securities in which the fund invests are considered investment grade at the time of purchase as rated by at least one major rating agency, or determined by the Subadviser to be of similar quality. Under normal market conditions, the fund intends to invest its assets to gain exposure to issuers of at least three different countries, one of which may be the United States. An issuer may be considered to be of a country if it is organized, has substantial assets, or derives substantial operating income in that country. As a non‑fundamental policy, under normal circumstances, the fund will invest at least 80% of its net assets in fixed income securities that mature within five years from the date of settlement.AZL DFA U.S. Core Equity Fund seeks long-term capital appreciation. The fund purchases a broad and diverse group of securities of U.S. companies. The fund invests in companies of all sizes, with increased exposure to smaller capitalization, lower relative price and/or higher profitability companies as compared to their representation in the U.S. Universe. The Subadviser generally defines the U.S. Universe as a market capitalization weighted set (e.g., the larger the company, the greater the proportion of the U.S. Universe it represents) of U.S. operating companies listed on a securities exchange in the United States that is deemed appropriate by the Subadviser. Under normal circumstances, the fund will invest at least 80% of its net assets in equity securities of U.S. companies.AZL DFA U.S. Small Cap Fund seeks long-term capital appreciation. The fund, using a market capitalization weighted approach, purchases a broad and diverse group of readily marketable securities of U.S. small‑cap companies. A company’s market capitalization is the number of its shares outstanding times its price per share. In general, the higher the relative market capitalization of the U.S. small‑cap company, the greater its representation in the fund. Under normal circumstances, the fund will invest at least 80% of its net assets in securities of small‑cap U.S. companies.AZL DFA International Core Equity Fund seeks long-term capital appreciation. The fund purchases a broad and diverse group of securities of non‑U.S. companies in developed markets. The fund invests in companies of all sizes, with increased exposure to smaller capitalization, lower relative price and/or higher profitability companies as compared to their representation in the International Universe. For purposes of this fund, the Subadviser defines the International Universe as a market capitalization weighted set (e.g., the larger the company, the greater the proportion of the International Universe it represents) of non‑U.S. companies in developed markets that have been authorized as approved markets for investment by the Subadviser’s Investment Committee. Under normal circumstances, the fund will invest at least 80% of its net assets in equity securities.Under normal market conditions, the Fund will allocate approximately 95% of its assets to the underlying funds described above, and approximately 5% of the Fund’s assets may be invested in equity and/or fixed income futures, such as S&P 500 Index futures and U.S. Treasury futures, which generally are liquid. The futures strategy, called the MVP risk management process, involves a quantitative analysis and seeks to reduce the volatility of the Fund. Volatility refersto the amount by which the price of an investment can change over a period of time. High volatility indicates that the price has changed significantly, up or down, over a short time period; lower volatility indicates that the price is not changing dramatically, but at a steady pace over a period of time. Generally, higher volatility is considered to be more risky.The goal of the MVP process is to achieve Fund volatility at or below 12% on an annualized basis over a full business cycle by either increasing or decreasing the exposure to equities over time. The Fund seeks to accomplish this primarily by selling equity index futures when markets experience heightened volatility, and by buying equity index futures when markets experience normal or lower levels of volatility. Futures are intended to provide the Manager an effective method to reduce volatility of the Fund and limit the need to decrease or increase allocations to the underlying funds. As a result, the MVP process could cause the equity exposure of the Fund to fluctuate significantly but it will generally not be lower than 10%. The MVP process would generally not reduce equity exposure during periods of moderate and low market volatility but during periods of extreme market volatility the MVP process could result in Fund equity exposure that is significantly lower than 10%.Due to market conditions or other factors, the actual or realized volatility of the Fund for any particular period of time may be materially higher than the threshold volatility level. The Fund’s threshold volatility level is not a total return performance target. It is possible for the Fund to maintain its volatility at or under its threshold volatility level while having negative performance returns.
Principal Risks of Investing in the Fund
The price per share of the Fund will fluctuate with changes in value of the investments held by the Fund. You may lose money by investing in the Fund. An investment in the Fund is not a deposit of a bank and is not insured or guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or any other government agency. There is no guarantee that the Fund will achieve its objective. The following is a summary of the principal risks to which the Fund’s portfolio as a whole is subject, any of which may adversely affect the Fund’s net asset value (NAV), yield, total return and ability to achieve its investment objective. If changes occur in a Fund’s portfolio holdings, the extent to which the portfolio is subject to each of these risks may also change. •   Allocation Risk – The Manager’s decisions regarding how the Fund’s assets should be allocated among the various underlying funds and to futures, may cause the Fund to underperform other funds with similar investment objectives. There can be no guarantee that investment decisions made by the Manager will produce the desired results. Further, because the Manager has limited discretion to change the underlying fund allocations or futures allocations under normal market conditions, the Fund may underperform comparable funds of funds for which the fund’s manager has such discretion to adjust allocations. •   Futures Risk – Because the Fund may utilize futures pursuant to its MVP risk management process, the Fund also is subject to derivatives risk, including risks related to futures. Investing in derivative instruments involves risks that may be different from or greater than the risks associated with investing directly in securities or other traditional investments. The value of futures contracts depend primarily upon the price of the securities, indexes, commodities, currencies or other instruments underlying them. Price movements are also influenced by, among other things, interest rates, changing supply and demand relationships, trade, fiscal, monetary, and exchange control programs and policies of governments, and national and international political and economic events and policies. The cost of futures may also be related, in part, to the degree of volatility of the underlying indices, securities, currencies, or other assets. Accordingly, futures on highly volatile indices, securities, currency, or other assets may be more expensive than futures on other investments. Changes in the value of the derivative may not correlate perfectly with the underlying asset, rate or index, and the Fund could lose more than the principal amount invested. •   Volatility Risk – Although the Fund’s investment strategy seeks not to exceed a specific volatility level, certain of the Fund’s investments may appreciate or decrease significantly in value over short periods of time, which may cause the Fund’s net asset value per share to experience significant increases or declines in value over short periods of time. The Fund’s volatility strategy may not produce the desired result and there can be no guarantee that the Fund will maintain volatility at or below its threshold volatility level. Additionally, maintenance of the volatility level will not ensure that the Fund will deliver competitive returns. The use of derivatives in connection with the Fund’s volatility strategy may expose the Fund to losses (some of which may be sudden) that it would not have otherwise been exposed to if it had only invested directly in equity and/or fixed income securities. Further, in some market conditions the Fund may either underperform or outperform as a direct result of the MVP process. The Fund may, for example, outperform in downward trending markets when volatility is high (and the equity allocation low) and underperform in upward trending markets when volatility is high (and the equity allocation low). •   Quantitative Investing Risk – The value of securities selected using quantitative analysis can react differently to issuer, political, market, and economic developments than the market as a whole or securities selected using only fundamental analysis. The factors used in quantitative analysis and the weight placed on those factors may not be predictive of a security’s value. In addition, factors that affect a security’s value can change over time and these changes may not be reflected in the quantitative model. A quantitative model can be adversely affected by errors or imperfections in the factors or the data on which evaluations are based, or by technical issues with construction or implementation of the model, which in any case may result in a failure of the portfolio to perform as expected or a failure to identify securities that will perform well in the future. Successful operation of a quantitative model is also reliant upon the information technology systems of the Manager or Subadviser, as applicable, and its ability to ensure those systems remain operational and that appropriate disaster recovery procedures are in place. There can be no assurance that the Manager or Sub‑Adviser will be successful in maintaining effective and operational trading models and the related hardware and software systems. •   Fund of Funds Risk – The Fund, as a shareholder of the underlying funds, indirectly bears its proportionate share of any investment management fees and other expenses of the underlying funds. Further due to the fees and expenses paid by the Fund, as well as small variations in the Fund’s actual allocations to the underlying funds and any futures and cash held in the Fund’s portfolio, the performance and income distributions of the Fund will not be the same as the performance and income distributions of the underlying funds allocated according to the target allocations described here. In addition, the Fund bears the investment risks of the investments of the underlying funds. The principal risks of the underlying funds are: •   Market Risk – The market value of portfolio securities may go up or down, sometimes rapidly and unpredictably. •   Issuer Risk – The value of a security may decline for a number of reasons directly related to the issuer of the security. •   Selection Risk – Because each underlying fund is actively managed, there can be no guarantee that investment decisions made for the funds will produce the desired results. •   Value Stocks Risk – Value stocks may perform differently from the market as a whole and following a value-oriented investment strategy may cause an underlying fund to at times underperform equity funds that use other investment strategies. •   Capitalization Risk – Investing in small- to mid‑sized companies creates risk because smaller companies may have unpredictable or limited earnings, and their securities may be less liquid or experience more volatile prices than those of large companies. •   Foreign Securities Risk – Investing in the securities of non‑U.S. issuers involves a number of risks, such as fluctuations in currency values, adverse political, social or economic developments, and differences in social and economic developments or policies. •   Risks of Investing in Japan – Japan may be subject to political, economic, nuclear, and labor risks, among others. Any of these risks, individually or in the aggregate, can impact an investment made in Japan. The growth of Japan’s economy has recently lagged that of its Asian neighbors and other major developed economies. Since 2000, Japan’s economic growth rate has generally remained low relative to other advanced economies, and it may remain low in the future. The Japanese economy faces several concerns, any of which could negatively affect the value of Japanese investments. •   Depositary Receipt Risk – Depositary receipts involve many of the same risks as those associated with direct investment in foreign securities. Investing in these instruments may expose a fund to credit risk with respect to the issuer of the depositary receipt, in addition to the risks of the underlying investment. •   Currency Risk – Investing in securities that trade in and receive revenues in foreign currencies creates risk because foreign currencies may decline relative to the U.S. dollar, resulting in a potential loss to a fund. •   Derivatives Risk – Investing in derivative instruments involves risks that may be different from or greater than the risks associated with investing directly in securities or other traditional investments. Derivatives are subject to a number of other risks, such as liquidity risk, interest rate risk, market risk, credit risk, and selection risk. Derivatives also involve the risk of mispricing or improper valuation and the risk that changes in the value may not correlate perfectly with the underlying asset, rate, or index. Using derivatives may result in losses, possibly in excess of the principal amount invested. •   Futures Risk – The value of futures contracts depend primarily upon the price of the securities, indexes, commodities, currencies or other instruments underlying them, and the cost of futures may also be related, in part, to the degree of volatility of the underlying instruments. Accordingly, futures on highly volatile underlying instruments may be more expensive than futures on other investments. Changes in the value of the derivative may not correlate perfectly with the underlying asset, rate or index, and the Fund could lose more than the principal amount invested. •   Credit Risk – The failure of the issuer of a debt security to pay interest or repay principal in a timely manner may have an adverse impact on the Fund’s earnings. •   Liquidity Risk – An investment that is difficult to purchase or sell may have an adverse effect on the Fund’s returns. •   Interest Rate Risk – Debt securities held by the Fund may decline in value due to rising interest rates. •   Income Risk – Falling interest rates may cause the Fund’s income to decline. •   Portfolio Turnover Risk – The Fund may trade its portfolio securities frequently, which could result in higher transaction costs and could adversely affect the Fund’s performance. •   Sovereign Debt Risk – Sovereign debt instruments are subject to the risk that a governmental entity may delay or refuse to pay interest or repay principal on its sovereign debt, due, for example, to cash flow problems, insufficient foreign currency reserves, political considerations, the relative size of the governmental entity’s debt position in relation to the economy or the failure to put in place economic reforms required by the International Monetary Fund or other multilateral agencies. •   Treasury Obligations Risk – Direct obligations of the U.S. Treasury have historically involved little risk of loss of principal if held to maturity. However, due to fluctuations in interest rates, the market value of such securities may vary during the period shareholders own shares of the Fund. •   U.S. Government Obligations Risk – Certain securities in which an underlying fund may invest, including securities issued by certain government agencies and government sponsored enterprises, are not guaranteed by the U.S. Government or supported by the full faith and credit of the United States. •   Repurchase Agreements and Purchase and Sale Contracts Risk – If the other party to a repurchase agreement or purchase and sale contract defaults on its obligation under the agreement, the Fund may suffer delays and incur costs or lose money in exercising its rights under the agreement. If the seller fails to repurchase the security in either situation and the market value of the security declines, the Fund may lose money. •   Profitability Investment Risk – High relative profitability stocks may perform differently from the market as a whole and following a profitability-oriented strategy may cause the Portfolio to, at times, underperform equity funds that use other investment strategies. •   Technology Sector Risk. Technology companies, including information technology companies, may have limited product lines, markets, financial resources or personnel. Technology companies typically face intense competition and potentially rapid product obsolescence. They are also heavily dependent on intellectual property rights and may be adversely affected by the loss or impairment of those rights. •   Financials Sector Risk – The performance of companies in the financials sector may be adversely impacted by many factors, including, among others, changes in government regulations, economic conditions, interest rates, credit rating downgrades, and decreased liquidity in credit markets. The extent to which the Fund may invest in a company that engages in securities-related activities or banking is limited by applicable law. The impact of changes in capital requirements and recent or future regulation of any individual financial company, or of the financials sector as a whole, cannot be predicted. In recent years, cyberattacks and technology malfunctions and failures have become increasingly frequent in this sector and have caused significant losses to companies in this sector, which may negatively impact the Fund. •   Industrials Sector Risk – Changes in government regulation, world events and economic conditions may adversely affect companies in the industrials sector. In addition, these companies are at risk for environmental and product liability damage claims. Commodity price volatility, changes in exchange rates, imposition of import controls, increased competition, depletion of resources, technological developments and labor relations may also adversely affect the companies in this sector.
Performance Information
The following bar chart and table provide an indication of the risks of an investment in the Fund by showing changes in its performance from year to year and by showing how the Fund’s average annual returns for one year, five years and since its inception compare with those of a broad-based measure of market performance, the S&P 500 Index. The Fund’s performance also is compared to the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, which shows how the   Fund’s performance compares with the returns of a broad index of investment-grade fixed-rate debt issues, and to the Moderate Composite Index, which shows how the Fund’s performance compares with a composite index composed of the S&P 500 Index (60%) and the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index (40%) in proportions similar to the equity to fixed income allocation of the Fund. Both the bar chart and the table assume reinvestment of dividends and distributions. The performance of the Fund will vary from year to year. The Fund’s performance does not reflect the cost of insurance and separate account charges which are imposed under your Contract. If they were included, performance would be reduced. Past performance does not indicate how the Fund will perform in the future.
Performance Bar Chart and Table Calendar Year Total Return Annual Return %
  Highest and Lowest Quarter Returns (for periods shown in the bar chart) Highest (Q4, 2020)      10.97 %  Lowest (Q1, 2020)      -13.30 % 
Average Annual Total Returns