TIAA-CREF Offers New TIPS Mutual Fund to the Public

A subpage of The U.S. Real Term Structure
by J. Huston McCulloch
Department of Economics, Ohio State University

TIAA-CREF has announced the opening of a new Inflation-Linked Bond Mutual Fund , which unlike CREF's Inflation-Linked Bond Variable Annuity Account (see separate subpage), is open to the general public rather than just to TIAA-CREF members.

The new fund has an annual expense ratio of 0.30 percentage points, which is significantly lower than the 0.39% charged by the Variable Annuity Account, and almost as low as Vanguard's 0.22% (see below). As of 3/31/03 it had grown to only $36.2 million in assets, as compared with some $2.6 billion in the CREF Variable Annuity Account, and $3.6 billion in the Vanguard fund.