TIAA-CREF Wins 2013 Lipper Fund Award for Best Overall Large Fund Company

Company recognized for outstanding three-year risk-adjusted investment track record

Latest in series of performance accolades

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--TIAA-CREF, a leading financial services provider, today announced that it has been named by Lipper as the 2013 Best Overall Large Fund Company.

“We are a company that exists to serve the long-term financial needs of our clients, and we thank Lipper for this award”

The Lipper Fund Awards honor those fund families and individual funds that consistently deliver strong risk-adjusted returns. Lipper presents the Best Overall Large Fund Company Award to the firm demonstrating the best risk-adjusted performance for the previous three years across all major asset classes including stocks, bonds and mixed asset funds. TIAA-CREF was one of 36 large investment firms eligible for the award.

“We are a company that exists to serve the long-term financial needs of our clients, and we thank Lipper for this award,” said Carol Deckbar, executive vice president and chief operating officer, TIAA-CREF Asset Management. “It affirms our disciplined, research-based investment approach and underscores the expertise of our long-tenured team of professionals. This award is a testament to the strength of our mutual fund offerings across all asset classes.”

TIAA-CREF offers its 3.7 million individual clients a broad range of investment choices, including mutual funds and variable annuity accounts.

The Lipper Fund Award adds to several recent industry recognitions TIAA-CREF has received for its investment performance. Ninety-eight percent of the company’s mutual funds and annuities have an overall Morningstar rating of three or more stars across all asset classes based on risk-adjusted performance (45 percent three stars, 44 percent four stars and 9 percent five stars; as of Dec. 31, 2012).¹ In addition, TIAA-CREF ranked 10th out of 62 mutual fund families in the 2012 Barron’s/Lipper fund family ranking, based on asset-weighted performance.²

Lipper has previously acknowledged the success of TIAA-CREF’s mutual funds. The TIAA-CREF Growth and Income Fund, Institutional Class was named Best Fund Over the Past Five Years in the large-cap core category in 2010 (out of 655 funds) and 2008 (out of 565 funds). The award recognizes risk-adjusted performance.³

Lipper Fund Award Methodology

Lipper considered funds registered for sale in the United States with at least 36 months of performance as of the end of the calendar year of the respective evaluation year. Fund groups with at least five equity, five bond or three mixed-asset portfolios in the respective asset classes are eligible for a group award. The award is given to the group with the lowest average decile ranking of the three years’ Consistent Return measure of the eligible funds as of November 30, 2012. TIAA-CREF was ranked among 36 fund companies.

About TIAA-CREF

TIAA-CREF (www.tiaa-cref.org) is a national financial services organization with $502 billion in assets under management (as of Dec. 31, 2012) and is the leading provider of retirement services in the academic, research, medical and cultural fields.

TIAA-CREF products may be subject to market and other risk factors. See the applicable product literature, or visit www.tiaa-cref.org for details.

TIAA-CREF Individual & Institutional Services, LLC and Teachers Personal Investors Services, Inc., members FINRA, distribute securities products.

You should consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses carefully before investing. Please call 877-518-9161, or go to www.tiaa-cref.org for a current prospectus that contains this and other information. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing.

¹ As of Dec. 31, 2012, 45 percent of TIAA-CREF funds have three stars, 44 percent four stars and 9 percent five stars. The Morningstar ratings include Retail, Retirement, Premier and Institutional fund share classes; CREF Accounts and the Life Funds. 53 percent of our funds/accounts have an overall rating of four and five stars and 98 percent are rated three or more stars. Morningstar is an independent service that rates mutual funds and variable annuities. The top 10 percent of accounts in an investment category receive five stars, the next 22.5 percent receive four stars, and the next 35 percent receive three stars. Morningstar proprietary ratings reflect historical risk-adjusted performance and can change every month. They are calculated from the account’s three-, five- and 10-year average annual returns in excess of 90-day Treasury bill returns with appropriate fee adjustments, and a risk factor that reflects mutual fund/subaccount performance below 90-day T-bill returns. The overall star ratings are Morningstar’s published ratings, which are weighted averages of its three-, five- and 10-year ratings for periods ended Dec. 31, 2012. Past performance cannot guarantee future results. For current performance and rankings, please visit www.tiaa-cref.org/performance.

² The rankings are quantitative, and are based on performance according to Lipper data. Each fund family is given an asset-weighted score within the five asset classes: U.S. Equity, World Equity, Mixed Asset, Taxable Bond and Tax-Exempt Bond, and the asset class score is then weighted by its size within the Lipper universe. TIAA-CREF ranked 29th out of 43 mutual-fund families in Lipper’s five-year ranking. The Barron’s/Lipper fund family survey uses an asset-weighted ranking system. Each fund’s return was measured against all those in its Lipper category, and the resulting percentile ranking was then weighted by asset size relative to the fund family’s other assets in its general category. The family’s overall ranking was then determined by weighting the five fund categories in proportion to their overall importance within Lipper’s fund universe. In the five-year overall ranking, TIAA-CREF is ranked 29th out of 53 mutual fund families. TIAA-CREF does not qualify for the 10-year ranking. The rankings were published in the Feb. 11, 2013 print edition of Barron’s.

³ The highest Lipper leader for consistent return (effective return) within each eligible classification determines the fund classification winner over three, five or 10 years. Funds must have at least 36 months of performance history as of the end of the evaluation year. The Growth & Income Fund, Institutional Class, ranked in the 77th percentile within its category over one year, fourth over three years and in the third percentile over five years in 2010. In 2008, it ranked in the fourth percentile within its category over one year.

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