Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 65.35
Liaison Gioia Thompson
Submission Date March 19, 2014
Executive Letter Download

STARS v1.2

University of Vermont
PAE-T2-6: Socially Responsible Retirement Plan

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.25 / 0.25 Barbara Johnson
Associate Vice President
Human Resources
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution offer a socially responsible investment option for retirement plans?:
Yes

A brief description of the socially responsible investment option for retirement plans:

TIAA/CREF

TIAA-CREF is the Teacher's Insurance and Annuity Associantion and College Retirement Equities Funds. Contributions made to TIAA's Traditional Annuity purchase a definite amount of future retirement income. In the Traditional Annuity, the principal is guaranteed and TIAA will pay interest on that principal. The interest rate is variable and is declared several times a year. TIAA invests almost exclusively in fixed dollar obligations made up of a broadly diversified group of bonds and mortgages. On retirement, if you annuitize your account, TIAA issues a check on a regular schedule for as long as you live. The dollar amount is stable, and you will receive a dividend as it is declared from time to time.

CREF and TIAA Real Estate Portfolio offer several different variable annuities as investment alternatives. CREF and TIAA Real Estate Portfolio differ from TIAA Traditional Annuity in that they do not offer a guaranteed annuity, but are designed instead to provide equity, bond and real estate investments as alternatives. CREF contributions buy accumulation units that are shares of ownership in broadly diversified investment portfolios including Stock, Bond, Social Choice, Global Equities, Equity Index, Money Market, and TIAA Real Estate Portfolio each with its own investment objectives. The dividends and other earnings are reinvested to buy additional accumulation units. On retirement, you receive an amount equal to the current value of a certain number of annuity units. You may transfer previous contributions to CREF from your TIAA Traditional Annuity but you must only do so over a period of 10 years.

Group Supplemental Retirement Annuities (GSRA)
Contributions may be directed to either a Retirement Annuity (RA) or a Group Supplemental Retirement Annuity (GSRA).

The GSRA has the same investment alternatives as the RA, with three exceptions:

The Traditional Annuity under the GSRA is fully transferable within the Retirement Savings Plan, whereas, under the RA it can only be transferred over a 10-year period.
The GSRA has a loan provision that will allow you to borrow up to 45% of the value of the account.

The Traditional Annuity investment alternative pays 1% less in interest.


The website URL where information about the program, policy, or practice is available:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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