USAA built its reputation serving America’s military families with honor and integrity.
But the company abandoned those principles to chase the latest left-wing fads.
And USAA got hit with one devastating blow that should terrify every woke corporation.
USAA’s woke agenda comes with a steep price
For decades, USAA stood as a beacon of trust for service members, veterans, and their families.
The San Antonio-based insurance and financial services giant earned its reputation by putting military families first.
But somewhere along the way, USAA’s leadership decided to abandon the people who built their success in favor of appeasing the radical Left.
The consequences of that decision are now coming home to roost in the most painful way possible.
S&P Global Ratings delivered a crushing blow to USAA by downgrading the company’s financial strength rating from AA+ to AA.
The downgrade came on the heels of Moody’s decision to drop USAA’s rating from Aaa to Aa1 on May 19.
This isn’t just a minor financial hiccup.
These downgrades represent a fundamental loss of confidence in USAA’s ability to manage its business effectively.
Banking arm becomes a massive liability
The root of USAA’s problems lies with USAA Federal Savings Bank, which has become a financial disaster.
S&P pointed to "new or continuing violations of law, rule, or regulation" flagged by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in December 2024, though the consent order was actually issued in December 2023.
The bank’s compliance failures have completely eroded USAA’s earnings diversity.
Here’s how bad things have gotten: Up until 2020, the bank contributed roughly $1 billion annually to USAA’s pretax income.
Since then, the bank has posted average annual losses of $236 million.
That’s a swing of more than $1.2 billion in the wrong direction.
USAA has racked up more than $240 million in regulatory fines since 2019 for issues ranging from unfair lending practices to failure to report suspicious transactions, according to The Federalist.
USAA chooses woke politics over military families
While USAA’s financial house was burning down, company leadership was busy virtue signaling to the radical Left.
The company scored a perfect 100 on the 2023 Corporate Equality Index from the Human Rights Campaign, a far-left activist group.
This perfect score means USAA fully embraced transgender medical subsidies for employees and their children, along with ideological criteria in hiring, vendor selection, and philanthropy.
Employees are subjected to mandatory trainings steeped in gender and sex ideology.
These are the same military families who, according to a 2024 Pew Research poll, lean 63 percent Republican among veterans.
USAA’s executive council lacks any apparent military veterans and seems completely out of touch with the company’s center-right clientele.
President and CEO Juan C. Andrade is USAA’s second chief in a row without any military experience.
Conservative lawyer gets the boot
USAA’s most shocking betrayal came when the company debanked conservative lawyer John Eastman in 2023.
Eastman served as an attorney for President Donald Trump and was targeted by the Left for his legal work.
USAA provided no clear reason for closing Eastman’s accounts, citing only its right to close accounts at will.
This wasn’t an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern of discrimination against conservative customers.
The 1792 Exchange, which evaluates companies for their risk of viewpoint discrimination, rates USAA as "high risk" for canceling clients or contracts based on political beliefs.
"USAA’s rating shows how deeply political activism has seeped into the culture of the insurance company," Daniel Cameron, CEO of the 1792 Exchange, explained. "I suspect that most of USAA’s members would find alarming its alignment with a progressive agenda."
Desperate damage control falls flat
Now that the financial chickens have come home to roost, USAA is scrambling to repair its image.
The company launched a new television ad campaign that leans heavily on patriotic imagery and features a gravelly voiced narrator trying to evoke military pride.
It’s a transparent attempt to win back the trust of military families after years of betraying their values.
But this glossy rebrand rings completely hollow when compared to the company’s actual actions.
USAA abandoned the military families who built their success to chase the approval of left-wing activists who will never be their customers.
The financial downgrades are just the beginning of USAA’s problems.
When you betray your core customer base to appease people who hate you, the consequences are inevitable.
USAA is learning this lesson the hard way, and every other woke corporation should take notice.
Military families deserved better than what USAA gave them.
