United Services Automobile Association ( USAA ) is a Fortune 500 financial services company offering banking, investing, and insurance to people and families that serve, or served, in the United States military.
USAA was founded in 1922 by a group of U.S. Army officers to self-insure each other when they were unable to secure auto insurance due to the perception that they were a high-risk group. USAA has since expanded to serve officers, NCOs, enlisted, and their families with property & casualty insurance, banking, life insurance, investment and financial planning products and services.
The company was one of the pioneers of direct marketing and most of its business is conducted over the Internet or telephone using employees instead of agents. Until the 1960s the bulk of its business was conducted via mail. In the late 1960s USAA began a transition from mail to phone based sales and service. A toll-free number was launched in 1978, and Internet sales and service was launched in 1999 via USAA.COM .
History
The organization was originally called the United States Army Automobile Association. In 1924, the name was changed to United Services Automobile Association, when members of other military services became eligible for membership. The company opened offices in Frankfurt, Germany and London, England, early in its history.
USAA is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, occupying 286 acres (a former horse farm) with one of the largest single-occupancy buildings in the United States, rivaling the Sears Tower and The Pentagon.
The organization started offering homeowner's and life insurance in the 1960s, and brokerage and banking services in the 1980s.
In 1996, eligibility was extended to enlisted personnel.
Lines of business
Property, casualty, and life insurance
USAA offers a range of personal property and casualty (P&C) insurance including automobile insurance, homeowner insurance, renters insurance, valuable personal property insurance, and umbrella insurance. In addition to P&C insurance, USAA provides whole life insurance, term life insurance, and annuities. USAA's life insurance policies, while not completely unique in the industry, are different than most offerings since they do not include a war-exclusion clause (also known as a "war clause").
Banking
Banking services are provided by the USAA Federal Savings Bank. The bank was established on December 30, 1983. According to the FDIC, as of March 2009, the bank held over $31.3 billion in deposits with more than 3.8 million accounts.
While the bank currently has only one physical location in San Antonio, Texas, USAA plans to open two additional local retail sites in San Antonio in the fall of 2009. Services can be accessed in person, by mail, by phone, or through the internet. The bank provides the ability to deposit checks using a camera phone (Deposit@Mobile) or a home scanner (Deposit@Home), ATM fee rebates, free standard checks for the life of the account, free online bill pay, and bank-by-mail services. USAA was one of the few major banks to begin offering American Express cards in 2006 in addition to their traditional offering of Mastercard.
Investing and financial planning
USAA provides a limited discount brokerage service and a family of no-load mutual funds. Mutual funds established by other companies can also be purchased and held in USAA investing accounts. USAA also offers limited free Financial Planning advice, as well as a more thorough flat-fee or hourly-rate financial planning service.
Other business
Through its Alliance Services Company, USAA runs a mail-order catalog service specializing in the sale of diamonds and jewelry. In addition, the ASC secures a variety of discounted services for members. These include travel-related services through rental car alliances with Avis Budget Group and Hertz Corporation, as well as discounts on cruise travel. Their retail alliances also include partnerships with FTD, FedEx, and ADT Security Services.
For its own investment purposes, USAA operates a real estate company which has holdings including major office buildings, industrial buildings, hotels, and other properties throughout the country.
Target market
USAA's mission statement indicates its focus is to serve its niche market, which consists of members of the U.S. military and their families. To that end, they have always marketed directly to members of the U.S. military. USAA membership is offered to officers and enlisted personnel, including those on active duty, those in the National Guard and Reserve, Officer candidates in commissioning programs (Academy, ROTC, OCS/OTS) and all those who have served in the aforementioned categories and who have retired or have been discharged honorably. Children of USAA members are also eligible to purchase USAA's P&C insurance products, and former members of USAA are allowed to resume membership at any time (without an age limit).
Eligibility can be determined using its website; however, the site does not contain a comprehensive statement of eligibility. USAA has, in the past, published a list of other eligible persons including special agents of the FBI and Secret Service, agents of the various military investigative services (NCIS, OSI, and CID), U.S. Foreign Service Officers, and officers from a variety of other smaller agencies. Recently, USAA has been sharpening its focus on members of the military. So, people working for certain non-military agencies that were accommodated in the past may find that they are no longer eligible.
Historically, only U.S. military officers (among certain other federally sworn officers) were eligible to join USAA, with descendants of USAA members able to purchase insurance from USAA-CIC. It did not matter if one was an active duty or retired officer; one could join at any time. In 1973, membership was opened to members of the National Guard and Reserves, and in 1996, eligibility was expanded to enlisted members of the armed services. As the number of persons who have served on active duty in an enlisted status in the U.S. Armed Forces is quite large, USAA chose to limit the establishment of eligibility to those who were currently on active duty or who had recently separated. The same time limit on establishment of eligibility was then applied to military officers. As USAA's capacity for taking on new members expanded, eligibility criteria relaxed. In 2008, USAA expanded membership eligibility to all military personnel and retirees, and all veterans who separated after 1996. In November 2009, USAA expanded eligibility requirements to offer coverage to anyone who has ever served honorably in the US Military.
Auto and property insurance and some banking services require that the customer meet membership eligibility criteria. USAA investment products as well as deposit-only banking services are available to non-members.
Legal structure
One of the characteristics that allows USAA to operate differently than almost every other Fortune 500 company is that it is not a corporation. The parent company, United Services Automobile Association is an inter-insurance exchange, the establishment of which is provided for under the Texas Insurance Code. This insurance exchange is made up of current and former military officers and NCOs who have taken out P&C policies with USAA; thus they simultaneously are insured by each other and, as a group, own USAA's assets. Theoretically, this implies that each member could be held completely responsible for all the losses of all the other members. However, the insurance code (Sec 942.142) stipulates that should an entity such as USAA accrue a substantial amount of assets, member liability is limited only to the premiums they have paid to USAA. In other words, if an enormous disaster were to result in claims that would wipe out all the assets of USAA, individual members could not legally be called upon to pay for any amount USAA is unable to pay out in claims.
Other insurance services are provided by a variety of wholly-owned subsidiaries. Adult children of USAA members and U.S. military junior enlisted personnel make up a group known at USAA as "associate members" insured through a subsidiary called USAA-Casualty Insurance Company (USAA-CIC). USAA-CIC is not an insurance exchange but rather a Delaware Insurance Corporation. This is a subtle nuance but is important concerning the return of profits - described below. Non-standard-risk drivers are insured by subsidiaries like USAA's County Mutual Insurance Company or USAA-General Indemnity Company. USAA also insures members in Europe through its subsidiary, USAA Limited. It is uncommon for a U.S. based insurance company to provide international P&C coverage, but USAA does so because so many military families are stationed out-of-country.
Returning profits to the insured
Since there are no shareholders, profits are retained for financial strength or returned to the members. Returns are accomplished through a Subscriber's Savings Account, or SSA. Each year a portion of USAA's profit is retained as "unassigned," the rest is allocated to each member's SSA using a formula based on the amount of premium the member paid that year as well as the member's SSA balance. The allocation of capital to a member's SSA account occurs early in the calendar year. Late in the calendar year a portion of the member's SSA is distributed to the member via checks or electronic funds transfer. Members w
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