I have a personal stake in this, because my first two WMAs noted that they had industry certifications that bound them to Fiduciary Duty, independently of their employment at TIAA-CREF. From a later WMA, I received recommendations to buy Universal Life Insurance with a Long Term Care rider (Pacific PremierCare Advantage), to broadly categorize the product.
I have added some boldface that is not in the original.
Excerpted from the SEC Press Release, 2021-123 :
Washington D.C., July 13, 2021 The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that TIAA-CREF Individual & Institutional Services LLC (TC Services), a subsidiary of Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA), will pay $97 million to settle charges of inaccurate and misleading statements and a failure to adequately disclose conflicts of interest to thousands of participants in TIAA record-kept employer-sponsored retirement plans (ESPs). ... ...
According to the SEC’s order, from Jan. 1, 2013 through March 30, 2018, TC Services and its Wealth Management Advisers (WMAs) did not adequately disclose the full nature and extent of their conflicts of interest in recommending to clients that they roll over their retirement assets into a managed account program called “Portfolio Advisor.” The order finds that TC Services failed to adequately disclose compensation practices that incentivized the firm and its WMAs to recommend Portfolio Advisor for reasons other than a client’s particular investment needs. Further, TC Services trained its WMAs to make, and its WMAs made, representations that they offered “objective” and “non-commissioned” advice, “put the client first,” and acted in the client’s best interest while holding themselves out as fiduciaries. This was misleading because TC Services’ financial incentives for WMAs rendered their advice non-objective and TC Services did not ensure that WMA’s recommendations were, in fact, in the best interest of its clients. TC Services simultaneously applied continual pressure to compel WMAs to prioritize the rollover of ESP assets into Portfolio Advisor over lower cost alternatives. The order also finds that TC Services failed to adopt and implement written policies and procedures reasonably designed to prevent violations of the Investment Advisers Act in connection with rollover recommendations.