Inside TIAA’s $294B Investment Engine

Emilia Weiner

One of the most powerful women in asset management got an auspicious start in the business of financial security—but not in the way you might expect.

A teenage Emilia “Emily” Wiener cut her teeth inside the bill-counting “cash cage” at her local Kmart in Long Branch, New Jersey. It was an eye-opening glimpse at the responsibility of handling stacks of money and an early sign of her affinity for numbers.

“My father, God bless him, marched me into Kmart and said: ‘She needs a job,’” Wiener says. “So they gave me a math test and put me on the cash registers. Before long they said, ‘Oh: she’s going to the cage.’” Hours were long, dinners were eaten during short breaks and homework awaited after clocking out.

Fast forward to today, and Wiener is the chief investment officer for TIAA’s $294 billion General Account, or GA, the investment engine that paid out more than $5.7 billion in retirement income to clients in 2023. She joined TIAA as head of fixed income for the GA in 2016.

TIAA checked in with Emily about how the GA is managed and the composition of the portfolio.

TIAA: Thanks for chatting with us, Emily. Can you give an overview of the GA’s approach?

Wiener: The GA is specifically built around delivering lifetime income through TIAA Traditional, our flagship fixed annuity product for 403(b) plans. In recent years, the GA also has begun to support lifetime income in 401(k) plans.

We are a liability-driven investor, so we focus on generating predictable, stable and recurring income from our investment portfolio to provide participants access to lifetime income.

Uniquely, TIAA can pass on additional crediting rates and dividends to our participants after we pay our minimum guaranteed rates, expenses and outlays. TIAA has credited above minimum rate guarantees every year for over 70 years, a streak made possible through careful portfolio construction and diligent capital management.

TIAA: What have higher interest rates meant to the GA portfolio?

Wiener: Rising interest rates generally benefit the GA, as we can reinvest new money flows and portfolio turnover at higher interest rates for the ultimate benefit of our participants. Because interest rates had been so low for so long, the rise in market rates has been a welcome reprieve in our work to support participants with strong crediting rates.

TIAA: What’s inside the GA’s portfolio?

Wiener: We maintain a highly diversified, multi-strategy and global portfolio. About 85% of the GA portfolio is invested in fixed-income strategies to produce stable, predictable and recurring income through scheduled coupon interest payments.

Our anchor fixed-income allocations are investment-grade securities, both public and private, and high-grade commercial mortgages. We also include allocations to high-yield fixed income, structured credit and “safe haven” assets such as U.S. Treasurys.

Our strategy is to maximize risk-adjusted returns within our risk appetite, and we invest with the intention of holding to maturity. We don’t actively trade the portfolio to beat any total return benchmark.

TIAA: How does the GA invest the remainder of the portfolio, the part that isn’t in bonds or commercial mortgage loans?

Wiener: One thing that sets TIAA’s GA apart is that we have one of the largest capital bases in the industry. This financial underpinning, combined with the inherent stability of our liabilities, earns TIAA one of the highest credit ratings among U.S. insurance companies.

This positioning allows us to dedicate a higher allocation to alternative investments than many of our insurance company peers. Alternatives can offer opportunities for diversification and higher long-term risk-adjusted returns not available in traditional markets.

We generally hold around 15% of the GA portfolio in real estate equity, private equity and real assets, including timber, infrastructure and farmland—think almonds, pistachios and wine grapes. In real estate, we recently invested in housing opportunities for low-income residents across the U.S. as part of our impact investing strategy.

Learn more about TIAA’s General Account by reading the full article.

This is an excerpt from an article that appeared in the TIAA TMRW Magazine. To read the full article, visit here.

The TIAA General Account is an insurance company account and is not available to investors as an investment. All guarantees are subject to TIAA’s claims-paying ability.

Annuities are issued by Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA), New York, NY.

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