Protect yourself by reporting suspicious activity to TRA
It’s becoming more common for individuals from financial planning firms, private companies, and entities engaged in fraud to use “the Teachers Retirement Association” or “TRA” in their communications, presentation materials, and advertising. By mentioning TRA by name, these groups seek to garner your trust quickly and to imply that they possess potentially unmerited expertise about your pension.
TRA is not affiliated with, nor does it endorse, any commercial companies that sell retirement products, provide general financial planning services, or claim to generate accurate TRA retirement benefit estimates or related information.
Keep the following points in mind if you receive correspondence or communications from third parties suggesting they have a connection with TRA.
- They may be engaged in malicious activity, seeking for you to disclose your TRA pension information in order to gain unauthorized access to your account or to convince you to take steps that could harm your financial future.
- TRA never grants permission to use of our name or materials in any sales solicitations or presentations. When TRA is notified of the unauthorized use of our name or materials, we work to contact outside entities and instruct them to modify their information so it no longer suggests that it has been supplied, approved, sponsored, or endorsed by TRA.
- TRA does not share our stakeholders’ personal data with financial planners or firms. Your account data is private; we will provide it only to you or someone authorized by you, and only after we have verified your identity or your representative’s identity. If an outside entity claims to possess specific details about your TRA plan, that is a red flag.
FAQs – Personal privacy and security
If you receive communication from a group claiming to have a connection with TRA or access to your personal retirement plan data, contact TRA so a member services representative can assist you. Never give out your personal information to anyone you don’t know without confirming they are who they say they are.
As your plan administrator, TRA is the best source of information. We employ member services representatives, offer preretirement counseling, host info sessions, publish plan summary documents, provide general information on our website, and more.
TRA is the only entity that can prepare accurate retirement benefit estimates for its members. We take into account applicable laws and statutes, your unique demographic information, and all years of service under Minnesota public pension plans. Because TRA’s benefit calculations are nuanced, third parties and tools like generative artificial intelligence (AI) are not reliable sources for forecasting accurate benefit information. Schedule an individual counseling appointment with TRA to receive and discuss thoroughly reviewed retirement benefit estimates.
Simple actions often deliver strong results.
- Be guarded about discussing your financial matters with new individuals or entities.
- Create a strong, unique password that is strictly confidential and keep your contact information up-to-date when setting up and using an online account with TRA or another organization. TRA further protects stakeholder accounts by using ID.me for identity verification, but in other circumstances it may be beneficial to enable two-factor verification.
- Regularly monitor your account transactions or changes.