Using Tech to Boost Retirement Savings and the Client Experience: TIAA

An expert in organizing and leading cross-functional teams, Jessica Austin Barker, TIAA’s chief digital and client experience officer, plays a key role in the financial services organization’s extensive technology transformation that kicked off two years ago.

It focuses on digital and emerging tech, such as artificial intelligence, to “elevate the client experience” and set people on “the right path for saving early” for retirement, she says.

“Technology is the lifeblood of client experience,” Barker asserts in a recent interview with ThinkAdvisor. “Tech enables you to scale, and it will allow advisors to scale themselves through providing technology and tools.”

TIAA, the retirement plan provider for institutions largely in the area of higher education, emphasizes “helping people understand what they need to be prepared to live through retirement and how … they can ensure that they have some commitment of lifetime income [annuities]” during those years, Barker says in the interview.

When Thasunda Brown Duckett joined TIAA as chief executive officer in 2021, she created the post of chief client experience officer. Barker was hired to fill it the following year.

She had had years in a similar role at Intuit, where she worked for more than two decades and was ultimately promoted to vice president of consumer group customer experience.

In the interview, Barker explains how she has organized TIAA into functioning in a horizontal mode, as opposed to working silo-style in departments.

The new way, she says, provides a “horizontal client experience,” wide-ranging, easier and with greater efficiency for retirement saving.

Barker spoke by phone from San Diego, where she is based. Here are highlights of our conversation.

THINKADVISOR: How does your team partner with TIAA’s broad technology function?

JESSICA AUSTIN BARKER: Very closely. Technology is the lifeblood of client experience.

TIAA is going through a massive technology transformation, and we’re making tremendous progress.

We’re addressing our technology foundation to get to a great place, while at the same time leapfrogging and investing in emergent technology capabilities so that we’re able to apply those to solve problems for our customers.

We’re investing in areas that feature technology, whether it’s the digital experience, where we can take advantage of the metaverse, or it’s leveraging large-language models and AI.

How does digital make it easier for people to plan their retirement?

Digital will help reach more Americans. Tech enables you to scale, and it will allow advisors to scale themselves through providing technology and tools.

With tech, now they can spend their time focusing more on some of the real value they can bring rather than taking up their time with manual [operations].

So it will allow us, over time, to enable more efficient operating experiences and a platform for those who are advising in person.

But you can also bring that same kind of advice to everybody in a digital way with education and tools that allow scenarios that are personalized.

 What are the challenges?

There are things that are already under way. The biggest hurdle is getting the attention and engagement of people. 

The opportunity that we’re focused on is education and helping engage people in how doing a little [saving] today to make such a difference in helping get people on the right path for saving early.

When did TIAA’s transformation start?

When Thasunda [Duckett] joined as our new CEO. Largely, our transformation journey with respect to client experience started when I came onboard.

My role was a new one that Thasunda created to elevate client experience.

It’s to advance our digital capabilities and lead and orchestrate the “horizontal client experience” to show that we’re getting out of what organizations can fall into, which is more of the siloed and channel focus only.

Just what is “client experience”?

Client experience is not a department. It’s the job of everyone at TIAA that requires us to work horizontally in a new way. 

We’ve been focused on increasing our operating model so that we’re working end to end horizontally across [the firm].

Historically, we’ve [been] more department-oriented. Now we’re bringing together teams across technology, client services, design, analytics, product management, advice.

We’ve assembled journey teams and organized around specific customer sets.

[This is meant to] create a delightful experience for enrollment and onboarding and a delightful experience in the realm of reporting and insights that we provide to plan sponsors and consultants on how their employees are doing with our goals around retirement savings.

So we’ve organized these cross-functional teams who have a shared mission and are working together day in and day out to solve those problems.

Tell me more about the “horizontal client experience.”

At the root of transforming client experience is how you organize. It’s a process to get the right ratios of the right types of skill sets.

That’s a fundamental step in how you horizontally organize around the different journey areas and problems you’re trying to solve for your clients. Then you start to really put the focus on solving the problems.

What’s the first step for the participant?

To enroll and onboard into the retirement plan. Then as you near retirement, part of your journey is understanding how you’re going to actually live on the source of savings you’ve accumulated as you live through retirement.

But there are a lot of journeys in between.  The way we’ve chosen to organize is around the life-stage journeys and the primary job that someone is trying to accomplish during them.

How did your 20 years of working at Intuit help in your present role? Were you involved in digital there?

Yes, and I was leading cross-functional teams.

Effectively, I was able to bring to TIAA the DNA of Intuit, which is known for being a very client-centric, client-focused culture.

What we’re applying here is trying to simplify the complex. I mean that by the end of the day, they have our customers feeling like we’re guiding them and have their back. 

We can take that cognitive burden off them and give them the confidence to feel like they’re making the right decisions to reach their goals.

What’s the future of retirement advice?

The old model of working till you’re 65 and then retiring is shifting, as we know.

Today many people aren’t on track for retirement. About 40% of American households are projected to be unable to afford to live in retirement.

Longevity has almost doubled over the past several decades. Just imagine that [rate] continuing ahead of the advancement of health care. That really changes the game in terms of what will be required to live on.

Our focus is on making sure that people understand the components of saving, how they invest and investment allocation.

Also, a piece of what they need to think about is securing their retirement through lifetime income [annuities] because longevity is only going to rise.

Our big focus is helping people understand that they need to be prepared to live through retirement and how it connects to their choices of saving, how they’re allocating investments today and how they can ensure that they have some commitment of lifetime income so they can feel confident in their retirement.