.tiaa Domain Information

Applicant Full Legal Name

Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America

Legal Establishment

Corporation (Insurance)

Applicant Address

730 Third Avenue
New York NY 10017
US

State Jurisdiction

New York, USA

Applicant Website

http://www.tiaa-cref.org

Applied for gTLD

TIAA

Domain Registration Status

Closed

Mission/Purpose of Domain Extension

18.1 MISSION AND PURPOSE OF .TIAA Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (ʺTIAAʺ) has filed this application for a .TIAA gTLD to serve as a secure, legitimate, trusted, hierarchical, and intuitive namespace for general insurance, investment and retirement related information as... Read more

18.1 MISSION AND PURPOSE OF .TIAA
Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (ʺTIAAʺ) has filed this application for a .TIAA gTLD to serve as a secure, legitimate, trusted, hierarchical, and intuitive namespace for general insurance, investment and retirement related information as well as the products and services that TIAA and its affiliates and subsidiaries provide to their customers. As a Registry Operator, TIAA will be entrusted to provide domain name registration services to TIAA, its qualified subsidiaries and/or affiliates, and/or any other designated third party.

Although TIAA is committed to moving forward with a .TIAA gTLD application, at the time of filing this application, there has not been enough time or market information available to fully analyze and evaluate all potential use case options.

18.1.1 Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America

TIAA, with its affiliates and subsidiaries, is a leading financial services organization with over $440 billion in combined assets under management as of 9/30/11. The firm is a leader in helping those in the academic, medical, cultural, government, and research fields plan for, and live in, retirement. TIAA is based in New York, New York and has office locations throughout the United States. TIAA employs over 7,000 individuals.


18.1.2 Mission and Purpose

TIAA currently plans a four-stage rollout for its gTLD:

1. Stage One
The initial stage of implementation of the gTLD will involve TIAA registering a limited number of .TIAA second-level domain names.

This initial use will provide TIAA's IT and security personnel the time to run a number of tests to ensure seamless and secure access using the .TIAA gTLD domain names, interoperability with various software and Web-based applications, and unbroken and secure use of all names. This initial allocation will also allow the appropriate TIAA staff to coordinate with the internal and external staff responsible for the delegation and setup phases of the .TIAA gTLD to ensure a proper transition from delegation to full operation.

2. Stage Two
Once all testing has been successfully completed, TIAA will begin allocating domain names in .TIAA to TIAA for more widespread corporate use. During this same period of time, TIAA will begin evaluating strategies to potentially migrate traffic away from its current patchwork network of second-level domain names, which are registered in a variety of TLDs, to the .TIAA gTLD.

It is in Stage Two that TIAA will evaluate expanding the operations of the gTLD to permit registration by other registrants such as licensees or strategic partners. Should an assessment of its expansion strategy lead to a decision to extend registration rights to other parties, this expansion is currently planned to take place during Stage Three. However, any expansion would be conditioned upon a review of the Specification 9 (Registry Code of Conduct) set forth in the template Registry Agreement to ensure compliance with TIAA's business model.

3. Stage Three
Depending on the analysis of the evaluations undertaken in Stage Two, TIAA may implement the permanent migration of Internet traffic away from the TLDs in which TIAA's domain names are currently registered, and toward the new .TIAA gTLD. It is in this stage that TIAA also may implement TIAA's decision to extend registration rights to licensees or strategic partners, depending upon compliance with Specification 9 as noted above.

After consideration of the following factors: analysis of TIAA's existing domain name portfolio; internal analysis of marketing initiatives; and the fact that TIAA will have full control over the number of registrations in the .TIAA gTLD namespace, TIAA is confident that the number of domain name registrations will be less than 10,000 in the first five years of operation.

4. Stage Four
Based on its experience to the end of Year 5, and based on its experience with any expansion implemented in Stage Three, TIAA will assess whether the business plan and expansion strategy should be augmented by extending registration rights to a broader class of registrants, potentially including other third parties and customers of TIAA. It is anticipated by TIAA that changes to the domain name industry, and particularly the impact of .BRAND gTLDs, will take at least five years to be realized and assessed. Any decision to expand the gTLD beyond corporate, qualified subsidiary/affiliate, and licensee/partner use will take into account this experience as well as the technical analysis of potential expansion.

The potential use of the .TIAA gTLD will also be driven by the organization's future business strategies as identified in its investor filings, see http://www.tiaa-cref.org/public/about/governance/corporate/annual-reports/index.html.

Utilizing current projections based upon TIAA's existing businesses, future business plans, current domain name portfolio, and other strategic factors, TIAA estimates second-level domain name registrations to be in line with the projections set forth in the financial template provided in its response to Question 46 of this application.×