The Fund is a “fund of funds” that is permitted to invest in shares of other TIAA-CREF Life Funds, in Institutional Class shares of funds of the TIAA-CREF Funds and potentially in other affiliated or unaffiliated investment pools or investment products, including other funds advised by the Fund’s investment adviser, Teachers Advisors, LLC (“Advisors”), or its affiliates (collectively, the “Underlying Funds”). The Fund is designed for investors seeking long-term total return, consisting of capital appreciation and current income, through a relatively stable asset allocation strategy targeting a moderate risk-return profile. Advisors generally seeks to meet the Fund’s investment objective by investing: (1) approximately 50% of the Fund’s assets in equity Underlying Funds and (2) approximately 50% of the Fund’s assets in fixed-income Underlying Funds. The Fund may deviate from these target allocations by up to ten percentage points depending upon current market conditions and outlook.

The Underlying Funds’ allocation targets generally represent targets for investments in equity and fixed-income asset classes. Within the equity and fixed-income asset classes, Advisors allocates the Fund’s investments to particular market sectors (which may include U.S. equity, international equity and fixed-income) represented by various Underlying Funds. To maintain an appropriate allocation among the Underlying Funds, the portfolio managers monitor the domestic and foreign equity markets, as well as overall financial and economic conditions. The Fund may sometimes be more heavily weighted toward equities or fixed-income than the target allocations, if the portfolio managers believe market conditions warrant. For example, the Fund may increase its holdings in fixed-income Underlying Funds in periods when the portfolio managers believe the equity markets will decline. The market sector allocations and Underlying Fund allocations may also be changed over time by the portfolio managers, including the addition and removal of market sectors and Underlying Funds in which the Fund invests in light of the Fund’s desired level of risk and potential return at a particular time as evaluated by the portfolio managers based on a mix of qualitative and quantitative factors. The portfolio managers may also opportunistically purchase other TIAA-CREF Life Funds, TIAA-CREF Funds or other investment pools or investment products, based on the portfolio managers’ evaluation of the market sectors and/or Underlying Funds, without prior notice to shareholders.

As a result of its investments in the Underlying Funds, the Fund’s returns will reflect investments in a mix of domestic and foreign equities of companies of various sizes and market capitalizations and a variety of domestic and foreign fixed-income instruments of private and governmental issuers of varying maturities and credit qualities.

As part of the Fund’s ability to invest in unaffiliated investment products or pools noted above, the Fund may invest in exchange-traded funds (“ETFs”) and exchange-traded notes (“ETNs”) to gain exposure to various market sectors or securities in order to effect its asset allocation strategy. Additionally, the Fund may use ETFs and ETNs for cash management, hedging or defensive purposes. ETFs and ETNs will be subject to the risks associated with the types of securities or sectors that they track, while ETNs, which are structured as fixed-income obligations, will also be subject to the general risks of fixed-income securities, including credit risk.

The Fund’s proposed asset class allocations, market sector allocations within each asset class, and Underlying Fund allocations within each market sector are listed in the chart below. These allocations may change over time. Underlying Fund allocations in particular may change from year to year.