Vestwell has partnered with TIAA/Nuveen, a leader in lifetime retirement income for over 100 years, to bring a guaranteed lifetime income solution to your clients in a familiar target date fund. This offering is now available on the Vestwell platform and seeks to provide retirees with steady, predictable income for life, expanding access to more stable and secure retirement options.

As a financial advisor, you can now leverage Vestwell’s full-service retirement platform to offer a lifetime income solution that seamlessly extends your firm’s capabilities—from administration and recordkeeping to regulatory and compliance support. Incorporating annuities into a holistic financial wellness package not only meets the growing demand for lifetime income retirement options but could also help you expand your practice and strengthen client relationships.

In this blog, we’ll explore how Vestwell’s lifetime income offer can differentiate your practice, provide clients with a potentially competitive retirement benefit, and address employees’ dynamic needs to—and through—retirement.¹

The Case for Lifetime Income

For many employees, having a stable source of income in retirement is a top priority. Aside from pension plans, which have become increasingly less common, annuities are one of the only retirement products that can provide your clients and their employees, and potentially their surviving spouses, with income for life.

Retirement annuities provide regular payments that generally offset market or longevity risks. By incorporating lifetime income as a workplace benefit, you can support your clients and their employees during the accumulation of their assets throughout their working lives, as well as the decumulation of their assets during retirement.

How Vestwell’s Lifetime Income Offer Works

1. Advisors can include the TIAA lifetime income option in their lineup for 401(k) plans by selecting the Nuveen Lifecycle Income (NLI) CIT Series—a diversified target date fund that includes the TIAA Secure Income Account (SIA)².
2. As employees get closer to retirement, their portfolio grows gradually more conservative, with an increasing allocation to the principal-protected SIA. This investment glidepath is designed to help prepare employees for their financial goals at their target retirement date and beyond.
3. The portion of the target date fund allocated to the SIA is guaranteed to earn interest and grow every day, regardless of market conditions.
4. When employees enter retirement, they can choose to convert³ a portion of their retirement savings to guaranteed monthly income for life.

Benefits of Lifetime Income for Advisors and Clients

Incorporating lifetime income solutions into your practice provides distinct advantages for both you and your clients:

• For Advisors: Lifetime income solutions can differentiate your practice by addressing the growing demand for secure, predictable retirement benefits. By offering a competitive workplace benefit, you position yourself as a trusted partner in financial wellness, helping clients attract and retain top talent. Additionally, these solutions allow you to deepen client relationships and broaden your service offerings, ultimately supporting your business growth.
• For Clients and Their Employees: Lifetime income provides employees with a sense of financial security throughout retirement, no matter how markets perform. They also empower employees to balance guaranteed income with investment-driven growth, creating a comprehensive and flexible retirement strategy. This stability fosters peace of mind, ensuring that essential expenses—like housing, healthcare, and daily living costs—are covered even during economic downturns.

In partnership with TIAA/Nuveen, Vestwell’s lifetime income offering can benefit advisors, clients, and employees by supporting financial wellness at all stages of the retirement journey.

The Value of Partnering With Vestwell

Vestwell is a modern workplace savings platform designed with advisors in mind. With SIA’s guarantees, backed by TIAA’s strength and expertise, adding a lifetime income option through Vestwell enables your clients to expand access to a more stable and secure retirement. Our holistic suite of benefits delivers a solution for every client:

• Best-In-Class Technology: Our modern, flexible, and open architecture platform lets you custom-build your offering. You and your clients benefit from a streamlined and intuitive user experience.
• Dedicated Support: Our robust service offering means you and your clients get the specialized support you need, when you need it.
• A Trusted Partner: As you grow your book of business, our team is in your corner. Vestwell becomes an extension of your firm, offering tools, technology, and support to help your firm scale.

Benefit from streamlined technology and dedicated support while keeping your brand, investment philosophy, and client servicing model front and center. We’re proud to introduce lifetime income as part of Vestwell’s suite of scalable savings solutions.

Expand Your Practice With Lifetime Income

Enhancing your retirement offering with lifetime income enables you to deliver a robust retirement solution, supporting your clients and their employees’ financial wellbeing, both during their working years and in retirement. By delivering predictable, long-term financial security, you can help clients offer a competitive workplace benefit that attracts and retains talent, while also setting your practice apart.

Take the next step in empowering financial wellness—partner with Vestwell and explore how our guaranteed lifetime income solution can transform your practice. Get in touch with Vestwell here.

Footnotes

¹All guarantees are based on TIAA’s claims-paying ability.

²The TIAA Secure Income Account (SIA) is a group annuity contract issued by Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA), New York, NY. TIAA Secure Income Account interest and income benefits include guaranteed amounts plus additional amounts as may be established on a year-by-year basis by the TIAA Board of Trustees. The additional amounts, when declared, remain in effect through the “declaration year”, which begins each March 1 for accumulating annuities and January 1 for payout annuities. Any guarantees under annuities issued by TIAA are subject to TIAA’s claims-paying ability. The TIAA Secure Income Account is a guaranteed insurance contract and not an investment for federal securities law purposes. Past performance is no guarantee of future performance. Form series including but not limited to: TIAA-STDFA-001-NUV and related state-specific versions. Not all contracts are available in all states or currently issued.

³Converting some or all of your savings to income benefits is an irrevocable decision once benefit payments begin.

Disclosures

The information presented is intended for education purposes only. It is not a solicitation or recommendation of any investment or strategy. All investments have risks, including the total or partial loss of principal. Annuities also have risks and can be complex and are accompanied by a variety of fees and expenses such as surrender charges, mortality and expense risk charges and administrative fees, and can have high commissions. Annuities are insurance contracts and may bear credit and other risks relating to the underwriter, they are not guaranteed by the FDIC, SIPC, or any other federal agency. There are also different forms of annuities, such as immediate and deferred, that can have other complexities, costs, and risks. Vestwell does not provide legal, tax, financial, or investment advice to any individual. Investors should consult their own qualified professional before making any decisions about their investments.

Important information on risk: Investing involves risk; principal loss is possible. There is no guarantee the Nuveen Lifecycle Income CIT Series’ investment objectives will be achieved. The Nuveen Lifecycle Income CITs are funds of funds subject to the risks of its underlying funds in proportion to each Fund’s allocation. Underlying Funds invest primarily in stocks and bonds. Large cap stocks may grow more slowly than the overall market. Growth stocks and stocks issued by smaller companies are more volatile than other stocks. Bonds lose value when the issuer is unable to make interest and principal payments when due or otherwise faces a decline in its credit quality. They experience volatility when interest rates fluctuate. Rising interest rates can cause bond prices to fall. Declining interest rates can cause bond income to fall. Non-U.S. investments involve risks including currency fluctuation, political and economic instability, and lack of liquidity and differing legal and accounting standards. These risks are magnified in emerging markets. The target date is the approximate date when investors plan to start withdrawing their money. The principal value of the Fund(s) are not guaranteed at any time, including at the target date. After 30 years past when the target date has been reached, the Funds may be merged into another target date Fund with the same asset allocation. The unit value of the Funds will fluctuate, and investors may lose money. The Fund may not achieve its target allocations and even if they do, the asset allocations may not achieve the desired risk-return characteristics and may result in the Fund underperforming other similar funds. Allocations are subject to change.

As a complex bank product, CITs are exposed to operational, regulatory and reputational risks. CITs may not be suitable for all plan investors or all plan needs and may outperform certain sector products during times of market volatility but also may underperform certain sector products over periods of time. Diversification does not assure a profit or protect against loss.

SEI Trust Company (the “Trustee”) serves as the Trustee of the Nuveen/SEI Trust Company Investment Trust III (the “Trust”) and maintains ultimate fiduciary authority over the management of, and the investments made, in the Nuveen Lifecycle Income CIT Series. Each Fund is part of the Trust operated by the Trustee. The Trustee is a trust company organized under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and wholly owned subsidiary of SEI Investments Company (SEI). The Nuveen Lifecycle Income CIT Series are managed by the Trustee, based on the investment advice of Nuveen Fund Advisors, LLC, the investment adviser to the Trust, and Nuveen Asset Management, LLC as investment sub-adviser to the Nuveen Lifecycle Income CIT Series. The Nuveen Lifecycle Income CIT Series are trusts for the collective investment of assets of participating tax qualified pension and profit sharing plans and related trusts, governmental plans and other eligible plans, as more fully described in the Declaration of Trust. As bank collective investment trusts, the trusts are exempt from registration as an investment company.

A plan fiduciary should consider the Funds’ objectives, risks, and expenses before investing. This and other information can be found in the Declaration of Trust and the Funds’ Disclosure Memoranda. The Fund is not a mutual fund, and its units are ”not registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the applicable securities laws of any state or other jurisdiction.