TIAA Promotes Houser to Expanded Institutional Head of Sales Role

Mike Houser

TIAA has promoted Mike Houser to head of institutional sales, leading a team focused on growing market share in each of the not-for-profit retirement plan market segments—higher education, health care, government, primary and secondary schools and enterprise sales—effective immediately, it announced Wednesday.

The promotion comes as TIAA seeks to execute the firm’s five-year strategy to grow not-for-profit retirement plan market share, joining together all sales directors that support these plans under institutional sales, it announced internally in an August 16 memo.

Houser will report to Ben Lewis, head of institutional strategic sales and consultant relations.

Houser was previously a senior director, consultant relations, at TIAA, and the company plans to backfill the position, a company spokesperson says, by email. Houser’s new role is “an expanded position,” the TIAA spokesperson says.

 “The charge of the team is to win new recordkeeping relationships and to retain all existing relationships. [Houser] will work closely with Tim Pitney and the lifetime income default solutions team to bring TIAA’s lifetime income solutions to more plan sponsors and more individuals,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.

TIAA created the  head of lifetime income position and promoted Pitney to the role in June.  

For TIAA, the firm’s five-year strategy included a focus on developing new clients in the NFP market, Lewis wrote in the memo. The company promoted Houser to the expanded role because of his experience with not-for-profit market segments.

Lewis wrote that “the institutional sales team has done an incredible job of expanding and retaining existing clients so far this year, with a retention rate above 93% and incredible momentum in our RetirePlus sales. As we celebrate those achievements, we must also look toward the future and how we can multiply our success.”

Houser joined TIAA in February 2022, following more than two decades at Fidelity.

TIAA appointed Melissa Kivett in May to the newly created role of executive vice president of corporate retirement solutions and business development to grow the firm’s market share in the corporate 401(k) market.