I had the same experience and feeling.
I've also experienced this elsewhere. TIAA was essentially sending me marketing emails I couldn't unsubscribe from. My financial manager with sympathetic and communicated my frustration to the business, but I don't believe it lead to any changes. As a result I have marked my emails from TIAA as spam, which now means email is not a reliable source of information from them, and so I unsubscribed from all email communication and instead receive paper mail. Sad.
I can name others using this pattern. Very frustrating. It's a lot of work to sever these relationships. I guess they know this and so think they can get away with it.
Same here, I was just about to comment about this exact problem with TIAA specifically, after receiving yet another marketing spam email from them today.
For a while they all had a footer like "This service communication provides information about your plan benefits to help you make informed decisions. It is sent as part of our plan services and is not subject to communication preferences. Thank you." But today's spam didn't even bother with that song and dance.
It's infuriating.