USAA

The United Services Automobile Association (USAA) is a diversified financial services group of companies and subsidiaries offering banking, investing, and insurance to people and families who serve, or served, in the United States military. At the end of 2021 there were 13 million members. The company had sold 48.6 million products. USAA employs over 37,000 people.

USAA was founded in 1922, when 25 US Army officers decided to insure each other’s vehicles as a reaction to being deemed too high-risk to be insured by general US insurers. Roll forwards almost 100 years and the mission of the association is to facilitate the financial security of its members, associates, and their families through the provision of a full range of highly competitive financial products and services; in so doing, USAA seeks to be the provider of choice for the military community.

In 2017, USAA established an innovation lab based in Austin, Texas – a members-only design lab which provides USAA account holders with the opportunity to engage and provide feedback on new innovations, concepts and exclusive pilots.

The lab is home to over 120 USAA employees and showcases some of the company’s most recent innovations and awards. Members have the opportunity to enrol in pilot programs, providing them early access to new features, products, services and tools being developed by USAA.

The following year, the Group announced it has begun piloting an augmented reality application aiming to simplify the car-purchasing process for consumers.

In 2019, the insurer announced a strategic tie-up with State Farm at the Dig | In conference that will see the pair test blockchain technology as they seek to automate insurance claims at the subrogation stage. In January 2021 the two companies announced auto subrogation claims between State Farm and USAA would be settled using blockchain technology. 

Later that same year, in September, USAA announced it had partnered with Google Cloud on a car damage estimating tool, in the hopes that the company can automate simple claims and move human adjusters to more complicated cases. The tool enables users to upload their own pictures of their car when they want to make a claim. Google then uses computer vision and data analytics to analyse the damage, the results of which are sent to Mitchel International, which can estimate repairs. From there, USAA can check for final adjustments, if required. As of June 2021 USAA had entered into a production-level test period 250 pairs of AR-enabled glasses distributed to adjusters.

In February 2021 USAA revealed plans to aggressively expand its SafePilot telematics program after it grew over 200% during 2021 compared the year prior. Year-on-year policy growth was recorded at 75%. Available in 39 states and District of Columbia as of year-end 2021, SafePilot offers users who exhibit safe driving habits discounts of up to 30%; drivers save 10% just for enrolling. Nearly half of all new policyholders in its pilot states opted in for the program, with more than 106k policies in place as of December 2020. During August 2022 the company announced the release of crash detection functionality on the app.

In June 2021 USAA announced its acquisition of auto insurtech Noblr to offer customers a pay-as-you-drive option, contrasting the pay-how-you-drive capabilities of SafePilot.