TIAA-CREF Releases 2012 Socially Responsible Investing Report

NEW YORK, July 17, 2012 – TIAA-CREF today announced the release of its 2012 Socially Responsible Investing Report. The report highlights many of TIAA-CREF’s socially responsible investment (SRI) strategies across the firm, within the various asset classes in which the company invests and in individual SRI portfolios.

"At TIAA-CREF, we are committed to our clients’ long-term financial success, and we have maintained this singular focus since we were founded in 1918," said Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., president and chief executive officer of TIAA-CREF. "Our company’s disciplined, long-term investment approach is consistent with one of sustainability’s central principles: meeting current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Highlights from the 2012 Socially Responsible Investing Report include:

Shareholder Engagement: We seek to promote long-term investment value for all TIAA-CREF retirement plan clients and individual and institutional investors by exercising our shareholder rights at the public companies in which we invest.

• In total, during 2011, we engaged in dialogues with more than 400 companies on a wide range of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.
• We supported a majority of the shareholder proposals filed asking for better disclosure on issues related to climate change as well as non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
• We encouraged real estate companies to disclose more information about how they are managing and measuring energy efficiency within their properties.

Public Advocacy and Industry Collaboration: As a large institutional investor, we comment on pending regulation that we believe is important to our clients. We also collaborate with other investors and organizations to establish best practices around ESG issues.

• In 2011, we submitted comment letters to the Securities and Exchange Commission on proposals for increased disclosure on the use of "conflict minerals" by public companies and payments made to governments to further the commercial development of oil, natural gas or minerals.
• Since 2009, we have been a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing, addressing issues including climate change, human rights and corporate governance. We also continue to participate in the Carbon Disclosure Project.
• With the goal of promoting best practices and protecting the integrity of microfinance investing, TIAA-CREF became a signatory to the Principles for Investors in Inclusive Finance in 2011 and served on the initiative’s Steering Committee. We are an active participant in the Global Impact Investing Network.
• TIAA-CREF is a founding partner of the Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings, a global, independent, multi-stakeholder initiative whose mission is to design and continuously improve a generally-accepted ratings framework for assessing the sustainability performance of companies.

Responsible Investing: We incorporate ESG considerations into a variety of asset classes, our community and impact investing programs, as well as the individual SRI portfolios that we offer.

• Our real estate portfolio received for the third consecutive year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star Sustained Excellence award for outstanding energy management and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
• We are committed to improving the sustainability of our investments in farmland, and in 2011, we joined seven organizations, altogether managing approximately $1.3 trillion of assets, to launch the Principles for Responsible Investment in Farmland.
• Through our community and impact investing efforts, we seek to invest in areas that affect social change and environmental stewardship while also producing competitive financial returns. As of May 31, 2012, we deployed investments and investment commitments for all impact and community investing programs totaled $691 million.
• For more than 20 years, we have offered our investors individual SRI portfolios through our Social Choice Account, which is the largest comprehensively screened investment vehicle available to individual investors in the United States1, with more than $11 billion in assets under management (as of May 31, 2012).

The full report is available on the TIAA-CREF website and can be accessed at the following the link: www.tiaa-cref.org/sri2012.

About TIAA-CREF
TIAA-CREF (www.tiaa-cref.org) is a national financial services organization with $481 billion in assets under management (as of 6/30/12) and is the leading provider of retirement services in the academic, research, medical and cultural fields.

Media Contact:
John McCool, Director, Corporate Public Relations
media@tiaa-cref.org, 888 200-4062

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.