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(You?re reading this quicklook as I?m boarding the plane to head back home. I have a lot of writing to catch up on?)
What a conference? USAA brought together a bunch of very interesting people. We saw great presentations and tech demonstrations, and we had a chance to interrogate their VPs. They also kept us oversupplied(!) with free food, coffee, & bandwidth.
Which brings me to my FTC disclosure: I?m running out of ways to say this, so I?m going to write one really long disclosure and then just keep linking to it. Do I protest too much? Perhaps, but I think I?m just trying to debunk the conspiracy persuade you with logic.
Here we go: I have a financial relationship with USAA. I?ve been a member for over 30 years of auto insurance and I?ve used their rewards credit card for at least 15 years. (They trust me with an obscenely high credit limit, even though I no longer have a paycheck to support it.) Our college daughter also insures her car with them and has her own USAA credit card. (They put an awful lot of trust in her, too!) I?ve set up a USAA account for my Dad, and he?s now heavily invested in their CDs. We haven?t yet insured our home with them or applied for their mortgages, but someday they might have the best deal.
USAA offered to fly me to San Antonio from Hawaii, but I chose to pay for my own airplane ticket to Houston to visit our daughter. (The rental-car drives between Houston & San Antonio? meh.) USAA put us up in a great hotel and introduced us to three excellent BBQ & Tex-Mex restaurants. The conference room had enough bandwidth to support a couple dozen bloggers, and the USAA campus has even been covertly infiltrated by Starbucks. We were treated better than last year, which means they raised their game from a 9.7/10.0 to a 9.8.
I?ve even begun discussing a couple of writing projects with their staff. They might bear fruit in a year or two, and I?ll share more about them as details become available.
Having said all of that, no money has passed between us. That could change someday, but I?m still financially independent and I?m not expanding my longboard-dude lifestyle. All ?Military Guide? revenue goes straight to military charities like Wounded Warrior Project and Fisher House.
I may be the kind of person who works for food (ask any of our neighbors) but I can?t be bribed with it. I?m still an objective reviewer of USAA?s policies & products, and I haven?t compromised my standards for a breakfast burrito. Frankly, I?d pay a conference fee and handle my own lodging/food expenses just to sit in on their presentations and share my opinions. USAA?s people and facilities and programs are blogger catnip.
Let me make my point from a more cynical perspective. USAA is a member-owned corporation, not a publicly listed stock. They don?t have to worry about shareholders (just their members), and they don?t have a share price to care about either. They?ve grown to over 24,000 employees (up about 5% since last year). Nearly a quarter of them are veterans and another large percentage are military family members. These people depend on USAA not just for their paychecks but also for their own insurance protection. The company started over 90 years ago with a bunch of officers insuring each others? cars because they couldn?t get military-friendly coverage anywhere else. If USAA wandered very far from their mission of caring for their members, their ?valued headcount? would vote with their feet. Entire platoons of bribed bloggers couldn?t hold a candle to the opinions that would be voiced by their disgruntled employees. I?ve looked behind the scenes for those disgruntled employees (a cousin works at USAA) and I haven?t found any.
Another perspective: these guys are proud to share. They?ve worked hard on their programs, their tech has dozens of patents, and they?ve accomplished many great community projects. If they were going to try to deceive us, it?d require far more effort than just doing their regular jobs of fulfilling their mission. Even worse, we bloggers can?t keep a secret. If USAA was trying to co-opt or trick us, at least one of our muckrackers would figure out a way to make even more money by breaking the news.
I?ve been a staff action officer and I?ve seen some smashmouth flag-officer rugby, so I?ve often wondered if USAA?s community-relations staff have found a sneaky way to enjoy another side benefit from blogger conferences. I?m pretty sure that their communications experts have their fingers on the pulse of the membership, and they?re constantly feeding it back to the company executives. There may be a time when one of the other execs isn?t really happy to hear the PR staff?s reports on what the membership is saying, or perhaps they?ll attempt to shoot the messenger cast doubt upon the credibility of the data. It could even be hypothetically possible to find internal resistance to the innovations proposed by the social-media experts. If I was one of the PR veterans who had to contend with disgruntled staff, then I?d host a blogger conference. I?d invite those execs to give a presentation and then I?d throw them to the wolves suggest that they ask for blogger commentary. The execs would benefit from the atmosphere of frank & honest feedback, and they?d be inspired to come up with new solutions to old problems.
Whew. I?m glad I?m done with that disclosure stuff. You probably are too.
Speaking of ?frank & honest feedback?, USAA?s banking staff has finally responded to it. Business checking is coming in 2013. No details are available yet, but USAA is becoming a full-service financial company. They?re going to provide small-business services for veterans & families, and entrepreneurs will be able to transfer all over the world while keeping the same business services with their financial & insurance company. This is not a charity project? it will benefit the members but it will be self-supporting from fees and other partnerships.
I?m going to write several more posts about the conference during the next few weeks, but let me wrap up this post with answers to some of the top reader questions. These responses are coming from Mike Kelly (Executive Director of Public Relations & Military Communications) and his ?Stakeholder Management & Mobilization? team. He?s a military retiree and a public affairs expert, and he?s the guy who gets to handle all our tricky blogger queries.
As mentioned in an earlier post, USAA Bank follows the industry practice of selling their mortgages. They also turn some servicing over to a third-party vendor, and this time it?s Wells Fargo. Member feedback on WF?s call center has not been overwhelmingly positive, and (thanks to your feedback) USAA is taking a critical look at it. Here?s the response:
First, let me apologize for your experience on that call. USAA has an arrangement with Wells Fargo which allows us to provide specific kinds of loans that we are not set up to provide, particularly FHA loans. This arrangement is called Military Family Home Loans and was established strictly to serve USAA members, with high-quality service. We hope you will give Military Family Home Loans another chance.
To provide the capital to lend to more members, USAA Bank sells most of the first mortgage loans it originates in the secondary market to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or Ginnie Mae. [If USAA Bank maintained the loans on our balance sheet, we would be not be able to provide as many mortgage loans to our members].
The servicing of the loans is managed by a handful of carefully selected servicers who agree to provide USAA members with exceptional service.
Because we recognize that buying a home is such an important event in our members? lives, we provide tools that assist with the broad array of decisions they must make during the home buying process including finding the right real estate agent, home, mortgage loan, and property insurance.
I?ll talk more about USAA?s expanded Home Circle services in another post.
I received several e-mails about depositing checks via scanners & mobile devices. It?s not always clear who?s eligible for the service, and some members who don?t have a particular service (like me!) may not always see the USAA web page that explains the rules. Here?s Mike?s response with the pertinent links:
We understand there is confusion with some members about who can use the Deposit@Home and Deposit@Mobile. Here?s a page on our site that explains it. And here is more background:? For USAA Bank to extend this service to our members, we need to ensure we understand their financial behaviors and level of financial responsibility. So currently, to qualify to use these services members must have a USAA checking or savings account and:
- Have an active USAA property and casualty insurance policy
- and be qualified for a USAA loan or credit card (not a USAA Secured Card).
OR
- Be eligible for USAA property and casualty insurance
- and have an active USAA loan or credit card (not a USAA Secured Card).
And last but not least, one reader e-mailed that USAA doesn?t always waive foreign transaction fees for members who are on orders. Mike jumped right on that one:
Wow, what timing! We are very pleased to let you know that as of Oct. 22, 2012, foreign transaction fees will be waived on USAA MasterCard, Visa, or American Express credit cards while a member has an active military benefit including Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, deployment, or PCS orders. Please submit military orders (scan and upload or mail/fax) to USAA to ensure the correct benefit is applied.
I have plenty of USAA material for other posts, and I?ll write those up as soon as I?m back home. I always enjoy visiting our daughter and I liked seeing Texas in November, but North Shore surf is up and I haven?t paddled out in over a week. Hawaii no ka oi!
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Related articles:
On the way to USAA
I?m goin? to USAA? again!
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Source: http://the-military-guide.com/2012/11/12/usaa-blogger-conference-initial-report/
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