TIAA-CREF

Workers Rights - Labor Action Labor Action
Human Rights Human Rights
Political Influence Political Influence
Climate Action Climate Action
Business Ethics Business Ethics


TIAA-CREF

730 3rd Ave., New York NY USA
10017
212-490-9000
http://www.tiaa-cref.org

Type:

Private


TIAA-CREF (Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund), headquartered in New York City, is one of the largest private retirement systems in the U.S. It provides “for more than 3 million members of the academic community and for investors outside academia’s ivied confines. It also serves some 15,000 institutional investors. TIAA-CREF’s core offerings include financial advice, investment information, retirement accounts, pensions, annuities, individual life and disability insurance, tuition financing, and trust services (through TIAA-CREF Trust). The system, a not-for-profit organization, also manages a line of mutual funds.”[1]

Criticism

Business Ethics

  • Social Activists Campaign Against TIAA-CREF, June 20, 2005. “A group of TIAA-CREF shareholders has resumed a protest campaign after a yearlong hiatus, saying the manager of the largest U.S. retirement fund reneged on promises to support a wider array of “socially conscious” investments. Social Choice for Social Change wanted New York-based TIAA-CREF to devote as much as 5% of the $7 billion Social Choice portfolio to certain investments including community-development loan funds, said Neil Wollman, a psychology professor at Manchester College in North Manchester, Ind. Wollman acts as spokesman for a group of about 400 investors, mostly academics. TIAA-CREF, which manages $345 billion in retirement assets for 3.2 million shareholders, is “totally stonewalling and backtracking” on the group’s investment proposals, Wollman said in an interview this week. Social Choice for Social Change will resume demonstrations and leafleting at TIAA-CREF branch offices as well as letter-writing campaigns, he said.”[2]

Praise

Business Ethics

  • Voice of Conscience, December 1988. “Timothy Smith is executive director of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), a New York based organization affiliated with the National Council of Churches. ICCR conducts research and coordinates activities for 17 Protestant denominations and 220 Roman Catholic orders and dioceses involved in bringing social concerns to corporate behavior. ICCR has worked to reform corporate conduct on issues such as toxic waste disposal, employment discrimination, investments in South Africa and Chile, redlining and urban reinvestment. The group also promotes alternative investment opportunities.” Timothy says of TIAA-CREF, “In the 1970s, it was mostly the churches [that] were filing shareholder resolutions or divesting of stocks in companies that were in South Africa, or who were looking at the question of screening portfolios [to avoid] companies that they felt were socially irresponsible. There were, of course, a number of individuals who were concerned about [corporate social responsibility] a decade ago…. In 1988 … institutions and individuals with [a combined] $250 billion portfolio are filing shareholder resolutions to hold companies accountable on issues like fair employment in Northern Ireland or South Africa or Star Wars. In this category, you would have institutions like TIAA/CREF, the Teachers Insurance Annuity Association/College Retirement Equities Fund, which is the largest pension fund in the world, the State of New York’s pension fund, the City of New York’s pension fund, the State of Wisconsin [and] the state of Minnesota, [all] using shareholder leverage … along with the churches and a number of individuals and organizations like Common Cause…. “[3]
  • Oil Company Targeted for Ties to Sudanese Military, February 7, 2000. “An oil company headquartered in Alberta, Canada, is the target of a divestment campaign aimed at forcing the company to stop its partnership with the Sudanese government in the exploitation of oil fields in the war-torn southern region of Sudan… Last month, TIAA-CREF, a college teachers’ fund, sold out of Talisman, where it once owned 261,000 shares. It followed the lead of the Texas Teachers Retirement Fund which dumped its 100,000 shares in November. Stephen Calderwood, a Calgary analyst with Salman Partners Inc., said the divestment campaign has caused Talisman’s shares to fall 29% in the past year. Buckee’s admission about the Sudanese military’s use of the airstrip refutes the firm’s earlier denials that it had no knowledge of how Khartoum was using the airfield, and that it vigorously opposed any use of the strip by the military. “I’ve heard from Dr. Buckee on more than one occasion that these oilfields needed protection and that the protection was being provided through the use of the airstrip by the government of Sudan,” Harker said. “He has said in a letter and in conversation that the airfield was being used to provide defensive and logistical support to those operations.” In November, a UN report found Sudan’s government had used scorched-earth tactics in order to clear a 100-kilometre zone around the oilfields, using soldiers, bombs and helicopter gunships.”[4]
  • A Proxy Battle: Shareholders vs. CEOs, June 13, 2006. CorpWatch writes, “the banner of shareholder activism has been carried by, on the one hand, religious and stakeholder groups, and on the other, corporate raiders and others bent on shifting a company’s strategy toward one that delivers a fatter profit. The pension funds – led by the California Public Employees Retirement System and TIAA-CREF (or the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund) – strove to balance these two aims, hoping to push U.S. companies toward changes that would yield long-term performance that would, in turn, provide for stronger nest eggs for the millions of retirees whose money they were managing.”[5]

Products and Brands

  • Retirement Plans: Employer-sponsored plans, plus Keoghs and SEP IRAs for small businesses.
  • IRAs: Traditional, Roth and SEP IRAs.
  • Education Savings: 529 plans, Coverdell Education Savings Accounts and custodial accounts.
  • Mutual Funds: A family of no-load mutual funds.
  • After-Tax Annuities
  • Life Insurance: Level Term, Annual Renewable Term, Universal Life (UL), Variable Universal Life (VUL), and Survivorship UL & VUL policies.

Brand names used are TIAA, TIAA-CREF Life Insurance Company, and CREF.[6]


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