UNITED SERVICES AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION

The United Services Automobile Association, or USAA for short, is a financial corporation that was founded in 1922 by a group of Army officers who were forced to self-insure one another when other auto insurance companies believed that they were a high risk group. The company has its headquarters in San Antonio and is one of the pioneers of direct marketing, looking for new clients through the internet or phone. The company switched to this kind of marketing in the 1960s, and, prior to that transition, the company did most of its business through mail. Although the company began by offering auto insurance services, the company would expand its line of services to include homeowner’s and life insurance in the 1960s and brokerage and banking services by the 1980s. The company’s clients were limited to commissioned officers, cadets and midshipmen eligible for cars or in college, students in the Marine Corps or Navy programs, or college graduate officer candidates in the OCS programs of various armed forces programs until 1996, when eligibility was extended to all enlisted personnel in the United States armed forces. Recently between 2009 and 2013, the company also offered restricted membership to civilians that allowed them to utilize USAA’s bank deposit products, investment products, and life insurance, although auto and property insurance products were still not eligible to these clients. USAA currently has a total of over 26,000 employees who look after their 11 million members. The company holds a total of over $130 billion in total assets under management and brings in an estimated net income of over 3.4 billion a year. The company now offers a wide variety of services to eligible members including CDs, credit cards, home mortgages, auto loans, various insurances, mutual funds annuities, bond, and ETF brokerage services, among others, with 19 locations. Some of the mutual funds it offers include the California Money Market Fund, Capital Growth Fund, Cornerstone Conservative Fund, and Extended Market Index Fund.