Whose idea was the Accenture contract? An absolute mess and sh-tshow that will only get worse
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Accenture is so bad we had to create new roles out of thin air to track and fix all their mistakes. Who would have thought that outsourcing your business to a backwards third world populace would result in this cluster F.
I had AI summarize the Marcella case and references to Accenture and TIAA partnership.
What Ms. Gift alleges she uncovered
The complaint portrays Ms. Gift's role as leading TIAA's New Business Initiatives Assessment (NBIA) process, which was intended to review whether significant projects—including those involving Accenture—were ready to proceed from a governance, compliance, operational, technology, and risk perspective.
According to the complaint, she believed there were several categories of concern.
- Governance and project oversight
The complaint alleges that major transformation work involving Accenture was moving forward without appropriate enterprise governance.
In plain language, she claims:
required governance reviews were incomplete or bypassed,
executive oversight was insufficient,
decision-making authority was unclear,
critical risks were not being adequately tracked before implementation.
These allegations form part of her broader claim that TIAA weakened the NBIA process after she raised concerns.
- Contract management (Master Services Agreement)
A recurring allegation involves the Master Services Agreement (MSA) between TIAA and Accenture.
The complaint alleges that:
executives responsible for the project were not sufficiently familiar with the contractual obligations,
the MSA imposed detailed responsibilities that affected governance,
project decisions were being made without full consideration of those contractual requirements.
The complaint recounts a June 2025 meeting in which Ms. Gift allegedly challenged executives' understanding of the MSA and asserted that she had previously shared and explained it.
This is an allegation made by the plaintiff; it has not been adjudicated.
- Operational readiness
The complaint alleges that certain initiatives were not operationally ready for deployment.
The asserted concerns include:
incomplete operational planning,
unresolved dependencies,
unclear ownership,
inadequate implementation readiness.
In a financial-services environment, these issues could increase the risk of service disruption or implementation failure if not resolved before launch.
- Compliance and regulatory risk
The complaint repeatedly states that Ms. Gift raised concerns regarding:
regulatory compliance,
enterprise risk management,
governance controls,
operational controls.
However, the complaint does not publicly identify a specific regulator finding a violation, nor does it allege that Accenture itself violated a law.
Instead, Ms. Gift alleges that TIAA did not sufficiently address the risks she identified.
- Risk documentation
The complaint refers to documentation maintained in Archer, a governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) platform commonly used to track risks, controls, and remediation activities.
She alleges that:
risks were documented,
those risks were communicated,
the documentation supported her concerns regarding governance.
The complaint does not state that Archer itself failed; rather, it alleges that documented risks were not adequately acted upon.
- Concerns raised by Accenture personnel
One of the more notable allegations is that concerns did not come only from Ms. Gift.
The complaint alleges that:
Accenture partners,
NBIA personnel,
subject-matter experts,
also expressed concerns about aspects of the transformation effort.
The complaint does not identify individual Accenture employees by name, nor does it claim Accenture committed wrongdoing. Instead, it alleges that these individuals shared concerns that Ms. Gift then elevated within TIAA.
Accenture stock has tanked and laid off many Indian contractors & subcontractors due to layoffs. Juile Sweet will be cutting more jobs. Plus, many have criminal records in their home country. They also have access to PII of Americans in the various systems.
@jj so, what do you care ? You must not be with TIAA-Prob a Troll-b/c anyone who is familiar w/the TIAA relationship w/Axcenture the last few yrs would know. you must get your news from the NY Post.
@h9 Did you actually read her lawsuit ? You are stating two things: She had nothing to do with Accenture but you admit you don’t even know what she did. If you read the Federal Lawsuit filed in the SDNY, and the approx 90 days, you will find out what she did, and her connection with Accenture will start to make sense to you.
@hc, appreciate your summary. Actually makes sense unlike most of the posts here.
@gf my last 9 months before getting the boot in Denver was a project with Accenture... It was brutal. Like they are completely incompetent and useless.
I feel like I wasted my time in 4 plus hour daily meetings with them instead of production work and making things better for my team transitioning skills and improvements to my replacement before I was axed.
That said I'm glad I'm out of there. The Accenture move was the worst thing ever done by TIAA and I was there nearly 20 years. YES it was even worse than closing my Denver office and letting hundreds of people walk who didn't want to or weren't asked to move to Frisco.
It is official TBD is by far the worst "leader" the firm has ever had. Yes even worse than Herb.
Accenture gained entry into Tiaa because Tiaa had a recent history of not delivering projects or delivering them late. Accenture claimed they could do it better. Tiaa viewed all there people as easily replaceable commodities and let vast amounts of business knowledge exit the door. Accenture didn’t have the expertise to replace these people and tried to utilize cheap unshored labor with little knowledge of the systems. It hasn’t worked. It was advertised that Accenture would introduce new tools but in reality Accenture hasn’t introduced new tools. At the same time architecture people like little bothwell through his arrogance and lack of knowledge thought they could easily replaceable reliable systems. They have found that it’s not that easy as they thought
Marcella Gift had nothing to do with Accenture. She listed a lot of things in the lawsuit to embarrass the company as part of her shakedown.
I'm not even sure what she did, but it wasn't tied to RKT.
I was just about to come to this site and make a post about my first experience with Accenture. Our TIAA FTE team is partnering with two teams that are completely made up of Accenture resources, and holy smokes, these people are completely incompetent and useless! We’ve met with two Accenture teams that are supposed to be working together on our project, and neither are aware of what each team is doing, completely unaware of how to tech solution, and any time you ask a question, it becomes a “takeaway” that they NEVER respond to.
Ten calls so far since the beginning of the PI, and we’ve literally done nothing but listen to the Accenture teams argue with each other about who is supposed to own things on their teams.
All those KT meeting with Accenture and they learned nothing.
RKT is going to sink because of these people.
@OP don’t know much about them but i’ve heard according to recent press releases another NY based recordkeeper Mutual of America Life Insurance Company, Inc. just signed a long term agreement w/Accenture & FIS. Gibson sits on the Board w/FiS. based on what happened here, w/days, cost over runs, accenture turnover, slow delivery, accenture layoffs, i hope they know it’s not all gonna be roses, lollipops, & 25% annual growth rates. in fact, client losses will continue slow bleed & may speed up.
@cn for what it’s worth, read the 90 page legal complaint by Marcella Gift. Her lawyers lay out alleged specifics w/Accenture. If AI existed two yrs earlier, we wouldn’t even need Accenture. We could do all of this Recordkeeping Reimagination ourselves & change & redesign out own workflows by our own American workers who understand the specific quirks of our company. India doesn’t understand American retirement plans or recordkeeping in general.
Accenture hasn't been living up to expectations and it's proven by the multiple project delays. Team synergy is non-existent. Accenture underestimated the TIAA ecosystem and the system complexity to take the business to the next level. Valuable TIAA people are gone, while Accenture swaps out their people due to incompatibility or incompetence. Accenture spends more time on PowerPoint slides and meetings that nothing gets done. Don't forget the 2 year contract for the rebadged Accenture employees is ending this year. A lot of issues with little resolution, let's hope AI can fix it.
HA!!
@aa yeah I am a5 and was a Denver casualty. I saw the Accenture go from bad to worse before I was gone, and sounds like it's even worse now which is scary. I pray for you all things get better.
How is Accenture worse than what we (weren't) doing before? No one ever gives specifics about what exactly they're doing wrong.
@a5 it has been a mess from day 1. Closing Denver was a huge blow. Overpromises and much underlivery. Gibson had her hands in it based on her close ties w/FIS.
SD but TBD authorized it and told everyone almost 2 years ago a few weeks after she didn't have the common courtesy or human decency to tell Denver employees their news directly.