Estate planning and settlement at TIAA
Name beneficiaries online, fund a trust by mail, and report a death at 1-888-380-6428
TIAA is a retirement provider managing 19 retirement retirement accounts. These tax-advantaged accounts transfer by beneficiary designation—not by will—making it critical to keep designations current and aligned with broader estate planning goals.
TIAA lets account holders update beneficiary designations online, by phone, and by mail. Trust funding is also available, allowing families to name a trust as the beneficiary of retirement accounts.
TIAA provides specific procedures for both proactive estate planning and filing claims after a death.
Beneficiaries and trust funding
How to manage beneficiaries online, fund a trust by mail, and review 19 account types at TIAA.
Preparing your estate →Death claim process
Report the death to TIAA Beneficiary Services at 1-888-380-6428. The page lists the steps and the documents to send.
When someone dies →For questions about any of these procedures, contact TIAA Trust, N.A. at 1-844-567-9001.
Frequently asked questions
Three can be owned by a trust. A TIAA Brokerage account can be registered to a trust on the Brokerage Account Application (F11035) with the Trustee Certification of Investment Powers (F11071), which every trustee signs and which asks for the trust's Taxpayer Identification Number, effective date, amendment date, and trust type; TIAA Brokerage does not review the trust document but may ask for a copy of the trust agreement. A TIAA-CREF Life insurance policy (F1008) and a non-qualified annuity (F7737) each take the name of the trust as owner, and all trustees sign when the policy or contract is trust owned. For TIAA and CREF retirement plan, annuity, and IRA contracts, TIAA's forms name the trust as beneficiary instead (F11468, F11015, F11555), with the trust name and date of trust.
No. TIAA completed the sale of TIAA Bank on August 1, 2023, and the bank operates as EverBank, N.A. under its own national bank charter; at the sale TIAA kept a non-controlling stake. Nearly all of the bank's assets and business lines went to the new investors, so deposit accounts that once said "TIAA Bank" are EverBank accounts. The trust business did not go with the sale: it stayed with TIAA and operates as TIAA Trust, N.A. under a national trust bank charter. A decedent with "TIAA" statements may therefore have accounts at two separate institutions: TIAA (retirement, annuities, brokerage, and TIAA Trust accounts) and EverBank (banking).
Sources
Data sourced from TIAA primary sources (33 pages reviewed). How we research.
TIAA customer support
TIAA Retirement Accounts
Phone
IRAs
Brokerage Services
TIAA-CREF Funds, retail class
Life insurance, existing policy
After-tax annuities, existing contracts
Nuveen investments
Plan administrators
From outside the US
Fax
Hours
Mailing address
Website
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