USAA Reviews in Arizona

I worked at USAA full-time for more than a year

Pros – Working at USAA was amazing. I only reason I left was because we decided to relocate to another state and there were no positions available anywhere near our destination. This is a military financial services company and it can be strict, however if you do what you are supposed to, the strict atmosphere barely affects you. The people that work there are very capable and pleasant. The managers I worked with were wonderful and did anything to help you if you needed it. The pay is competitive or better than I've found elsewhere and the benefits are second to none.

Cons – It is a call center environment so you are expected to be logged in to your phones helping members when at your desk. It can be very, very busy and hard to keep up if your time management skills are subpar. Not really a con per say, but there are people that don't fit well into this environment.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at USAA full-time for more than a year

Pros – The facility looks nice.... (crickets)
And the facility looks nice with covered parking... (still thinking)
Umm... I loved my co-workers (for the most part)
Yep... That's about it.

Cons – So, are you ready?

They lie to new hires about EVERYTHING - yes EVERYTHING. "No, it's not sales, it's helping the member when they mention a need.", turmed into, "If you don't lie to them and get that sale, I may have to fire you.".

FMLA, oh dear FMLA. I kid you not, 80% of people that were there long enough to apply for FMLA were on it. I even considered it once I started crying uncontrollably like an anxiety strickened mess when my weekend ended. Who does that?

And yes, good ol' politics. Luckily, I am very good at these, but for my friends who weren't, well they were escorted out of the building if you know what I mean. You better not disagree with the company views verbally, keep it in your head. Either your manager will slowly fire you or someone trying to save their own *** will report it. A lot of people cheat their results and make sure they report anything that will make them look loyal to the company to keep the focus off of their lies and betrayals. I know it sounds like a work place soap opera, because it is. In less than a year, 7 people on my team more or less tenured were fired. YIKES right? Now you know why everyone is on FMLA. If you're not there you can't be fired;). By the way, only 2 people out of the 16 that were hired with me are there. What does that say?

In a nutshell, DON'T DO IT if you know what's good for you. I would rather be unemployed.

Advice to Senior Management – You all know you hate it too. I have had a few express their outlook on the company (oddly the same as my view). Ease up on the people that pay your salary (the little people). Upper upper management, well you all need a good replacing.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at USAA full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Benefits, benefits, benefits. They give you the best and lowest cost benefits.

Cons – Micromanagement. They will work you like you are a soldier.

Advice to Senior Management – Recognize changes that you make are too frequent.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at USAA full-time for less than a year

Pros – Nice physical office and property. Nice parking garage. Great security on-site

Cons – Extremely condescending new-hire manager for the insurance classes. Job is extremely micromanaged by a bunch of policies set by simpletons that would sink in the real world if it were not for their "diversity".

Advice to Senior Management – Its sad to see how your continuing to ruin a great company with your incompetence.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at USAA full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Member before I was an employee, I still strongly believe in the mission - USAA is hands-down the best financial security company in the world, and seriously goes out of their way for the members
8% 401k match, approximately 5k in tuition money
Almost all of the happiness with the job comes purely from the overall mission, but it can be difficult to focus on serving the members when over-worked, stressed, and not recognized (more below)

Cons – Referrals/sales. These have become the most important stat for any employee. They are weighed the heaviest in all performance evaluation (in two of the major categories - call quality and business results) It seems to me that the most important factor in evaluating a customer service representative should be the member's rating of their service. If the member rates you a 5 (or 10 as it now is) and yet you failed to convince them to buy a new product, you're rated lower.
Performance evaluation is very gray and very subjective. Managers have these areas in which they comment on your performance/results, Below expectations, Partially met, met, exceeds, and far exceeds. An outside observer might expect this sounds an awful lot like a bell curve. This is most definitely not the case. Instead it's more like 75% ME, 20% PM, and 5% BE/EE.
USAA's internal hire/transfer climate is so competitive, If you want to go any other department or move up in the company, everyone knows you need that EE rating. Managers will dangle it like a carrot but always find some reason not to reward you.
They have endless stats analyzing the most minute of details about your activities and performance on the phone – do well in one area and they can just dig deeper and question you on why you didn’t magically do work list while we had back-to-back calls all day every day, or why some random number that you didn’t even know existed is out of line with peer average. They can even “live observe” you (they sit at their computer and watch everything you do on your computer and hear everything you say, doing this all day until they can call you out on something). If you really dig on someone, you can find something wrong with anyone. An employee can open Facebook on break and if someone on their page cussed, they can get fired for inappropriate usage of the computer. If someone calls in and asks for insurance cards to be faxed to the DMV you can get in trouble for not saying a ridiculous “setup” such as “In order to ensure I’m understanding your financial situation I’ll be asking you some questions through out the call.. so what has you calling in needing insurance cards today?”
I wish I had concrete numbers, but personal observation of turnover would be roughly 50% within first year or two, and 90% within 5 years. Yet somehow they claim <5%. My guess would be that to avoid reporting it, they don’t count anyone on any form of corrective action (which, like I stated earlier, a manager can find something wrong with anyone, and if an employee is already feeling overworked and stressed the added stress of possibly losing your job can make someone leave in a hurry to avoid having to say they were fired)
I don't think it's because the executives are greedy and money-hungry. Maybe I am still naïve, but I bet General Robles really does believe the things he is saying during the employee meetings. I believe they only want valid referrals, not a referral on every call as we’re expected, I’d expect they don’t really want us over-worked as we are, but despite hiring like crazy the last two years, we lost so many of those new employees and they’re hiring less and less, I’m guessing with the catastrophes that hit recently they don’t want to spend anymore, so they’re instead looking to be more totalitarian with our jobs(if you go to break 15 minutes later than scheduled your manager/director are e-mailed). But something is being missed as it transfers down the chain of command.
With the climate being so competitive, representatives are all working themselves to exhaustion trying to get every detail well above “peer average” in the futile attempt to get “EE” to move up (thereby driving up averages in every category), managers want to get promoted and make a name for themselves, so they demand more and more of their representatives (nitpicking every minute detail to demand more and more of those that want to succeed at USAA, forcing out those that can’t keep up). I don’t believe the corporate climate has shifted to greed, I just think it’s a result of all the competition and everyone trying to look better than their peers.
The end result of all of this is stressed, over-worked employees, and USAA is losing all of the good ones to other companies, the service-oriented employees are leaving because they’re tired of the sales-oriented measurements, and members are suffering with poorly trained reps because the skilled and experienced ones are leaving within 5 years. Members need to be aware that employees can’t say or do anything about all of this, we don’t have a confidential HR that we can just ask questions to for advice, managers do these evaluations/corrective actions and employees don’t know anything about how the processes work or what their rights are and have no one to complain to. We’re told to take it up the chain of command - why would we cast ourselves in further bad light by talking to our manager/director about how we’re upset?

Advice to Senior Management – Return to the original "three legged stool" concept - members, employees, financial strength
Provide more appropriate positive recognition for the front-line employees working diligently for the membership - taking back to back calls all day every day (it is absolutely exhausting)
Provide appropriate performance evaluations - BE/PM/ME/EE/FE should be clearly explained as to what needs to be done to obtain, and should be assigned based on a more statistically relevant manner (i.e. 10% BE, 20% PM, 40% ME, 20% EE, 10% FE)
Quit pushing more and more work on employees as the company grows by literally millions but the number of employees remains stagnant. Stop expecting productivity to magically increase higher and higher instead of just getting more people on the phones to help with call volume. Employees literally don't even have time to take a sip of water between calls. The next call is in before you can close your previous window.
Allow more "green time" - aux 3 time to work on other things rather than constantly auto-in. Especially important in positions like claims where work quality is suffering drastically because everyone is constantly getting inbound calls and can't focus on claims handling and investigations.
The vast majority of *professionals* - people that want to make a career in insurance - do not want to work in a call center for 20, 30, 40 some years. Provide time off phones and more job opportunities that aren't purely call center operations.
I still believe in the mission, and I trust that executive management does as well, but something is being lost in the mix - the employees.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at USAA full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Company culture is awesome, no commission, deal with only military members and their families. Great benefits, retirement pension as well as matching 8% 401k

Cons – If your looking to make a lot of money seek employment else where. USAA is owned by the membership very responsible with the memberships money. USAA is not paying six figure salaries like other insurance agents are making.

Advice to Senior Management – Speak up for your frontline employees some feel very overworked overwhelmed. Let them have conversations with the members and inform them through their relationships what USAA has to offer. Even though USAA representatives are not commissioned it is a very high pressure sales environment.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at USAA full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Great benefits, good pay, meaningful work

Cons – The employees which are in direct contact with customers/members bear an immense amount of pressure, stress, and anxiety. They are micromanaged and then rated/judged by self-interested front-line managers who will ultimately determine the outcome of the representative's career. In short, those who are politically savvy will survive. Those who aren't, won't.

Advice to Senior Management – Managers should be capable of performing the job of those they manage. When this changes, new managers should be promoted from within.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at USAA full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Great benefits, good overall culture.

Cons – Career progression and performance metrics constantly change.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at USAA full-time for more than a year

Pros – nice fascility, good health insurance day one. you can apply for other depts: mortgage, banking, insurance.

Cons – non stop calls, cannot get out of one call before another one comes in. no breaks.. no time to followup with members. Usaa members who call often feel unhappy with our pressure to push them into another product. Let employees just do insurance work.. too many expectations for the pay... not many opportunities to advance.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at USAA full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Benefits are great, facility is top notch, bonus is decent, customers are extremely agreeable. Great place to get your 7 and 66 paid for.

Cons – The job is billed as financial advisor, but you will spend more time talking to people regarding their "life event" with the expectation that you sell them an investment or life insurance product. These might as well be cold calls as the customers typically have no idea why they are talking to a financial advisor. It is then up to you to help manage their credit/debt/divorce/car purchase/mortgage refi/etc. just enough to gain their confidence, then pitch them life insurance. Apparently financial advisor means if it has to do with money then you are the go to.

On a typical day I would say less than 15% of the phone calls taken are even remotely interested in investments or life insurance. Other departments are incentivized to drop calls on FAs in order to provide advice on any ridiculous situation people find themselves in. This job is tele-sales, not financial advice. Portfolios are prepackaged and not competitive.

Management is to busy trying to manage call center metrics to actually provide support to their advisors. The focus here is all call center numbers, you will spend your entire day attached to your phone. You will be grilled on how long it takes you to notate on a file, research a product offline, or go to the bathroom. Your breaks and lunch times will be watched regularly. And good luck having a weekend off in your first couple of years.

Advice to Senior Management – Allow advisors an opportunity to establish an ongoing relationship with customers. Ease off the annuities, manipulation into asking for a product does not make it suitable. Allow advisors the use of their licenses by creating portfolios that match individual need as opposed to an algorithm. Get the expense ratios down. Have someone manage the call center, let 24s manage their people.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend