The Accenture people have transitioned, the initial Jacksonville and Denver date has passed and there have been spot layoffs here and there but the company is still running just fine. Maybe all the doom and gloom here is unwarranted? There is a new CRM launching and Traditional is spreading its wings. While all executives are overpaid, maybe it is time to acknowledge that leadership might have a small clue. It is easy to say , well this will hurt us down the line, but you can say that about anything, including no change.
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To the poster who used the term “ignoramus”, I know you think you have a better high level understanding of things, but there are many factors you don’t seem to be aware of. The GA is managed. It doesn’t invest itself. Long term decisions regarding risk, reward, economics, geopolitics and actuarial obligations to participants all have to be made. Right now, those decisions are being made by managers who making an absolute hash of the operating business. When you strip out the future obligations to participants from the current assets, you have a little over 40 billion. That’s IF the markets and investments perform as expected. The company has lost almost 1billion in net income in the past two years despite selling billions in assets like Evergreen and despite cutting billions in salary and benefits through layoffs. So that net loss comes out of the operating business in the form of lower reserves, the only cushion the company has against that insulates the GA from the performance of the operating business. So don’t make the mistake of thinking the performance of the business cannot or will not affect the GA. 1) the losses in the business can impact the book value which can impact a lot of things including credit rating. 2) the same people overseeing the decisions in the operating business are overseeing the decisions regarding the risk/return assumptions under which the GA operates. It’s complex. It cannot be fully addressed on a message board, but a management approach that leads to operating failure cannot be ignored when that same management oversees a trillion dollar plus investment pool that has trillion dollar plus in future contractual obligations. So, maybe grow your understanding and strengthen your opinions rather than posing and denigrating the opinions of others.
Yet another ignoramus who thinks the GA is a functioning ponzi scheme. It does not need to increase the incoming funds to keep up with its payments. It could not take another dollar in and there would be plenty to pay its obligations. It is not social security.
For most of the teens it only paid the minimum. It already broke from one guarantee rate and it had no effect in its credit rating.
But nice try chicken little.
How does TIAA Traditional “print money”? Genuinely curious as I’ve heard this statement a few times but have never been told how.
Traditional has not seen the type of flows it once had. The CFO even mentioned it in a town hall. If by printing money you mean the income the GA makes then you do realize that the GA needs a growing asset base to keep up with inflation and paying more than the minimum guarantee to participants.
The minute TIAA pays less than what it historically has will signal to the market trouble. Since the executives can’t decrease the payout, they have to decrease costs and/or invests in higher risk assets that generate a higher return based on their illiquidity premium. The problem with that? It has the potential to have detrimental effects on the company’s credit rating , which if it drops a few notches (or a letter) is another signal to the market that TIAA is in trouble.
So buckle up boys and girls - it’s going to be a wild, downward ride to the bottom.
Okey doke. Good luck with that then. I’m sure it’ll all turn out great.
Rodger was a rookie CEO.
You do realize that cuts and cost savings in 2024, 2025 and 2026 have no impact on 2022 and 2023 loses, right? You know this, right?
I agree that if not for the traditional the company would be in big trouble and the air force would be in big trouble if it didn't have planes. But they do have the traditional and it prints money for the company.
The ignorance about the traditional is evident. Spoken like someone who doesn't work there and is b1tchy because they couldn't get their $12k out in a lump sum and yelled at a call center rep about it. Wealth management has been around for over 20 years. So forgive me if I don't completely believe your cold hard "truth."
The writing has been on the wall at TIAA since they lost their non profit tax status. That is an unfortunate fact. They started losing huge institutional pools of assets in the only market in which they had any standing or credibility, Academia and research institutions. That market is shrinking. So….shrinking market share in a shrinking market is the corporate version of Stage II cancer. This is not an easy situation for any CEO. The odds of turning it around are long under even the best of circumstances. Herb Allison saw the cancer and tried to open a new revenue stream from managed individual accounts. It was an attempt to grow revenue organically. Roger Ferguson saw the cancer too, and he bought Nuveen and EverBank. It was attempt to grow revenue through strategic acquisitio n. Thasunda is in so far over her head that I actually feel sorry for her. Marketing campaigns are the best tool she has in her skill set. But “Retire Inequality” and assorted attempts at PR just….don’t…get…it. Herb Allison and Roger Ferguson were the doctors hired to treat the cancer. The doctors are gone. The cancer has gotten worse. They identified the cancer (shrinking market share in our only market that is, itself shrinking). They knew 15-20 years ago the company had the business version of cancer and they tried to treat it. Thasunda is the hospice nurse brought in at the end.
If the goal is to live thrive and survive as a corporation, You simply do NOT bring in a rookie CEO into a company this big and complicated under dire circumstances. She’s the hospice nurse. No experienced CEO wants the company break up and sale on their permanent record. The young ones don’t want it to ki-l their career and the older ones don’t want it to be their career legacy. That is the unfortunate truth. Unless some miracle happens like Social Security gets outsourced to TIAA, TBD is the last CEO.
We should celebrate when they cut people (costs) because it shows that they know what they’re doing?
Wow.
You do realize that even with all the cuts and cost savings, the company lost over $300 million in ‘22 and over $600 million in ‘23? You know this, right?
Look, you need to stop rationalizing low probabilities of you want to be true and start focusing on either what you know is true, or what is most probably true.
The company is not in healthy shape for the long term, nor is the current executive team experienced or capable enough to manage a highly complex company through difficult times. There are too many issues to even briefly discuss them all. But know this, if they cannot turn a profit SOON, it’s gonna be over. The only reason TIAA is still in business is because the annuitants who might want to leave can only do so over ten years. The company is a disaster. In the future it will be a cautionary case study in business schools. Without the ten year lock-up, they’d already be defunct. You may not like to hear that and you can convince yourself it isn’t true, but it is the cold unvarnished truth.
There is a reason they couldn’t find a single experienced CEO willing to accept $18 million and benefits to take the job after Roger. There’s a reason why Roger bought Nuveen. There’s a reason why they quickly threw together an RIA to do wealth management.
They are losing market share in a shrinking institutional educational market. Their response was to enter new business lines and start exiting old ones. Despite Those responses, they have lost almost one billion in the past two years.
Here’s a cup of coffee. Wake up and smell it.
@nf+1jpd3a9cw while I disagree with you on some points and also agree with you on others, just wanted to say thanks for putting forth cogent points to consider. Quite refreshing to intellectually “argue” and still feel we could grab a beer afterwards.
Hopefully we’re both wrong :)
But TIAA is not a wealth management firm. They are a retirement plan provider insurance company with an asset management subsidiary. The inflows from contributions alone are in the 10s of billions, so they got that. The wealth area is not much more than salesmen compensated for moving funds around between products, if the reports are to be believed.
The company will sustain and I agree that more will need to be cut. While maybe it doesn't need to be celebrated. It shouldn't be vilified either. So if you work there, you should be prepared for more cuts.
You do realize the “billions rolling in” is NOT from new flows I.e. assets that TIAA manages I.e. the life blood of a wealth mgmt firm? The vast majority of TIAA’s income from the GA and a paltry dividend from Nuveen.
TIAA only has long-term survivability if it brings in more client money and/or cuts expenses drastically. Number one ain’t happening so the logical choice is to cut expenses. Any id--t with a calculator can make the decision to lay people off; the EC isn’t doing anything extraordinary.
It is not like this place is Walgreens, the billions will keep rolling in. If expenses need to be cut, people will be cut. It is that simple. If everyone is so concerned with the financials then we should be applauding when leadership cuts expenses(people), which shows they understanding what they are doing.
I’d wait until the full year results for 2024 come out before deciding if the “doom and gloom” is warranted or not. Those results should show up on the website any day now. TIAA’s operating business has shown a net loss two years in a row. A third will not bode well for employees or participants. I’m also a bit concerned over the class action suit filed on behalf of wealth clients and the whistleblower complaint regarding the company’s “unbiased” planning software from Morningstar that allegedly allocates all clients into TIAA Traditional and TIAA Real Estate….an investment choice that may meet the lower suitability standard, but not a fiduciary standard. I don’t know if either the class action or whistleblower complaints have merit, but if they do it would be another blow to an already tarnished reputation regarding integrity and ethics. The company just doesn’t seem willing or able to deal with the issues of maintaining fiduciary duty to client assets when their own corporate interests (executive comp and bonuses) get in the way. They always seem to do what’s best for the top tier managers. Just my opinion based on working there and observing their short sighted strategic decisions.
Twisted up about debt? Who said anything about corporate debt? Has NOTHING to do with my point about the GA. However, look at all the debt coming due for Nuveen in the next few years…
Maybe do some homework and analysis on the total addressable market, TIAA’s market share and GA asset allocation and run rates before making blanket statements.
“It’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt”
Sounds like someone confused St. Patrick's Day and April Fool's Day and posted early...
Ugg are you the one who gets all twisted up about debt, and how like every other large corp, this company has some? The Traditional prints money, it is not going to run out
I think we can all agree TIAA is suffering from the problems a 100+ year old company suffers from - bloat and the unwillingness to pivot to a new business strategy when the market became competitive with new entrants into the space.
The current leadership is doing too little too late. Are all of these new initiatives really attracting more $$ to TIAA or reducing costs? I suppose we’ll see once TIAA releases its 2024 financials.
The issue that many people have is that the current leadership speaks out of both sides of their mouth. They pretend to be transparent but are no where close. Just take the most recent performance evaluation rollout. To say it’s not a forced distribution in one sentence and then say that the enterprise will fall into these predefined buckets the next sentence is so blatantly disingenuous. And to think associates are d-mb enough to not realize the double speak is insulting.
The only thing TIAA has going for it is the General Account with its locked up participant capital. With no true inflows, it’s income won’t be able to sustain it’s outflows at some point in the future and I hope those of y’all that have blindly bought into what the EC is selling aren’t caught with your pants down.
"They don't know" but I do! Replacing antiquated tech is a problem now? Isn't bringing in Salesforce a good thing if the existing infrastructure is so bad?. If transactions were not being completed the SEC would shut us down, so that is not happening. Don't forget about all mystery projects that I know about that you don't ! But you will never know because they have now been cancelled. If the systems are going down and we are sending erroneous letters with the full staff we have, maybe it is time to get rid of some of the staff and change it up. If things are so bad now then maybe people working under a little pressure might actually produce some results.
A full parking lot and cafe mean everything is working fine? Adding Salesforce means everything is working fine? I don't think anyone thought the changes listed were going to put TIAA out of business overnight or at all. It just makes it harder for those still here and a worse experience for our clients. It's clear that a lot of folks are so far removed from the day to day business that if they have no idea what's going on. They don't know when systems go down, they don't know when transactions take longer to process if they process at all, they don't know when we mail letters in mass to clients with bad information. They don't know about the money, time, and effort spent on projects only to have the plug pulled on them.
Letting go of a few hundred people over the next 16 months will leave plenty of time to back fill and I don't think it will be the first time some teams are missing the mark. Some teams have been doing that for years! There are still plenty of cars in the parking lot and it is still very crowded at lunch. Any company can replace 5% of its workforce over 2 years.
"Checking back in a year" is the exact problem with this board. It is always something that is going to cause a problem then. It never materializes and everything just keeps moving along
WTF are you talking about.
While many in Jacksonville are gone, the end date for the rest is in a few months… by comparison due to sheer number, Denver only has a handful of 2025 dates most of which being in July of 2025 while the larger majority of Denver’s end dates are March and July of 2026.
Many teams will be literally split in half and running below target for a few months or more until replacements get up to speed for backfilled roles. You will soon hear folks in the cafeteria and around campus be overwhelmed with responsibilities and perhaps leave the company on their own to relieve the stress/pinch of losing their coworkers.
So check this board in about a year to see just how fine the company is running.