Put simply by TIAA CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett on an episode of Fortune’s Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast: “There are so many scams.”
But the same technology is also helping humans detect suspicious behavior before money disappears. Recently, TIAA flagged an unusual request from a 76-year-old customer attempting to withdraw his entire $3 million retirement portfolio. According to Duckett, the retiree had been targeted by a scammer—but the company’s AI system was first to notice something was off.
“He was being scammed, but our AI tool flagged it,” she said. A portfolio manager then escalated the out-of-pattern withdrawal to TIAA’s fraud team, which spent hours trying to convince the customer he was being deceived.
“The first thing is you don’t want to believe you’ve been scammed,” Duckett said. “You’ve almost been trained to defend the scam.” Eventually, a fraud specialist contacted the man’s daughter, and TIAA stopped the money from moving.
“Our participant said to us, ‘You saved my bacon,’” recalled Duckett—who ranked as No. 7 on Fortune’s 2026 Most Powerful Women list.
