The most common question I get from people a year into a policy is whether it's on track. Fair question, and the honest answer starts with the shape of the curve rather than a number, because design changes the number by years.
Year one through three is the slow stretch, and it's slow on purpose. Acquisition costs come out early, so your net surrender value trails what you've paid in. On a well-built high cash value design you'll usually have meaningful access in year one, and it still won't equal your premiums yet. This is the period where people get discouraged and quit, which is the single most expensive move available to them.
Somewhere in years four through eight the cumulative cash value crosses cumulative premium. Where exactly depends on the design, the carrier, and your rate class, and a heavily PUA-weighted policy crosses years earlier than a base-heavy one. That crossover is not the finish line, it's just the point where the accounting stops looking odd.
By year ten the behavior changes character. The growth in a single year starts to approach or exceed the premium you put in that year, because you're now compounding on a base that took a decade to assemble. From there the line grows whether you keep funding it or not, though it grows faster if you do.
Now stop reading generalities and go look at your own contract. Pull the illustration you were given at issue and find the net surrender value column, guaranteed and non-guaranteed side by side. Those are your year 3, 5, and 10 numbers, specific to your policy. Then order an in-force illustration from the carrier, which is free, and compare it against what you were originally shown. Read the columns carefully. If you're behind the non-guaranteed projection, that's usually the crediting environment doing what crediting environments do, rather than a problem with your policy.