C-Suite decisions (acquisitions and new market strategy) will prove to be the downfall of this once strong and successful brand. The former CEO was more of an intellect (+super nice guy too) with a minimal understanding of what it takes to succeed in today's and tomorrow's retirement business. Buying a municipal bond shop may have diversified asset holdings but did nothing to address the fundamental and systemic challenges associated with declining revenues in general account, turn around the pending doom when outflows outpace inflows, or fix an outdated, antiquated and archaic RK platform. The CEO should have deployed assets used for Nuveen and Bank biz to fix RK platform (or buy a new one), develop a robust IRA platform that would grandfather rights and privileges of TIAA Traditional for use on that platform, and build-out other complimentary services to serve their large customer base. It's was the EASY button formula but the CEO missed the boat and it will cost them dearly down the road (10-12 years and it will get really bad is my guess). Some of the tough challenges are already here today when considering the financial risks of a 3% guarantee in Traditional and 10 year Treasury rates - not good. It will be a death by a thousand cuts since their only way to fix the declining revenues is through growth and scale. Growth for TIAA is a massive challenge because of reasons stated above - they put the money on the wrong horse. If they wanted to know what they needed to do the CEO didn't need analysts or professional consultants to help figure that out - he just had to look at his NUMBER ONE competitor and follow that strategy. Pretty simple if you asked me but nobody asked - then again, even if they did, nobody would listen.