TIAA Annuity: Providing Annuities for the Greater Good

TIAA stands for Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association. It was established by the Carnegie Foundation in 1918 as a wholly funded arrangement of pensions for professors. On 1st of July 1952, TIAA launched the world's first variable annuity: the College Retirement Equities Fund (CREF). CREF has been touted by an editor from Fortune magazine as one of the astounding development in the insurance-investment industry since the opening of Social Security Act. Indeed, the services and features of TIAA-CREF can be considered a milestone.

TIAA-CREF now offers a wide variety of financial products and services such as Retirement Plans, Education Savings, After-Tax Annuities, Individual Retirement Accounts, Mutual Funds, Life Insurance, Brokerage Services, Planning Tools and Calculators, Meetings and Counseling, Trust Services, Services for Plan Sponsors, and Beneficiary Services.

For TIAA annuity, they offer three main types—CREF Variable Annuity Accounts, TIAA Variable Annuity Accounts, and the TIAA Traditional Annuity.

Under the CREF Variable Annuity Accounts, they have six account classifications: World, US/International Equity, US Equity, Balanced, Fixed Income, and Money Market. All of them seek favorable long term rate of return, capital appreciation from quality portfolios. The account differences lie in the form of investments:

• CREF Global Equities Account - foreign and domestic stocks
• CREF Stock Account - common stocks
• CREF Equity Index Account - tracks the market for common stocks which are publicly traded in the United States as shown by the broad stock market index
• CREF Growth Account - chooses common stocks which present exceptional opportunity for growth in the future
• CREF Social Choice Account - reflects on the investment performance of the fiscal markets whilst giving particular consideration to specific social criteria
• CREF Bond Market Account - high current income consistent with conserving the capital
• CREF Inflation-Linked Bond Account - outpaces inflation by venturing in inflation-indexed bonds-fixed-earnings securities whose proceeds are designed to track a specified inflation index over the life of the bond
• CREF Money Market Account - high current income steady while maintaining liquidity and saving capital

For the TIAA variable annuity accounts, they only offer one account type and this is the TIAA Real Estate Account. This type of investment aims to get encouraging returns by real estate appreciation and rental income of the account.

The third type, which is the TIAA Traditional Annuity, has two account categories: Retirement Annuity and Supplemental Retirement Annuities, IRAs and Keoghs. These traditional annuities are both guaranteed by TIAA's claim paying ability for 90 years. They guarantee your principal rate and the minimum interest rate that will apply. In excess of the guaranteed rate, they also offer the opportunity for additional amounts (which TIAA annuity has been crediting since 1948 as declared by their board of trustees).

With a USD 400 billion worth of reputation comes the responsibility of staying committed in helping those who are in the medical, academic, cultural, and research fields. If you especially come from those fields, TIAA-CREF is a good choice for your annuity.