Prime Highlights
- TIAA completes two phases of its TETRIS transformation project, cutting tech debt nearly in half.
- The initiative enabled 87 business use cases and helped launch new products like the MyChoice Multi-Year Guaranteed Annuity.
Key Facts
- TETRIS phase one won a CIO 100 Award in 2025, and phase two won one in 2026.
- Consolidating 17 design systems sped up product launches by 35% and improved accessibility for over 185,000 non-English-speaking customers.
Background
Sastry Durvasula walked into TIAA in early 2022. The company’s technology was outdated, and he wanted to fix that and get it ready for growth. Four years later, TIAA has finished two phases of an initiative called Technology Ecosystem Transformation, or TETRIS. Tech debt is down nearly 50%, and the company now offers customers a lot more than it used to.
Phase two started in late 2024 and added 87 use cases across the firm’s major business lines. That groundwork gave TIAA the foundation to launch its MyChoice Multi-Year Guaranteed Annuity and build the TIAA Gateway, an API-driven portal linking the company with retirement and wealth planning partners.
Durvasula, who serves as TIAA’s chief operating, information and digital officer, brought the multimillion-dollar project to the board around three goals: growing the business, sparking innovation, and building a stronger IT core.
The effort has helped modernize the bulk of the company’s technology systems, putting TIAA in a strong position for what comes next.
Bringing 17 separate design systems together into one also cut product launch times by 35% and made services more accessible to over 185,000 customers who don’t speak English, while mainframe applications and data centers made a smooth transition to the cloud, marking real progress for the company.