For years, USAA has made headlines for what it does beyond banking and insurance. Its Face the Fight® initiative took the country by storm as it formed a coalition of over 250 organizations and raised $85 million to tackle veteran suicide. This Veterans Day, the company has committed $500 million over the next five years to “Honor Through Action,” a movement which will forever change the support for the military community.
We Are The Mighty sat down with USAA’s CEO, Juan Andrade, to talk about the campaign, why it matters to USAA, and his hopes for positively impacting military families for generations to come.
“For us, this is about really inspiring and motivating the public and the private sector to focus on improving the quality of life for our military community,” Andrade shared. “We’ve served over 14 million members to date, and a lot of them—most of them—have worn the uniform. The simple truth is that they have already sacrificed for our country—now it is our time to serve them. For me, this is really important. When I became the CEO, a commitment that I made to our members and to our employees was that I would listen, and I would listen actively. And what our members have said is that the three things that matter most to them is what Honor Through Action is focused on.”
Honor Through Action will position military families to thrive by focusing on three areas:
Meaningful Careers
USAA’s work will focus on helping veterans and military spouses build strong careers through career navigation, employer engagement, skills development, and community support.
Financial Security
USAA will strengthen the financial security of the military community through effective education, trusted advice, and tools that help families plan, prepare, and
respond to the unique needs of military life.
Well-Being
Building on the success of Face the Fight, USAA’s nationwide veteran suicide-prevention initiative, Honor Through Action will expand efforts to include mental and physical health, caregiver support, community connection, and the prevention of veteran homelessness.
“When you think about these three pillars, if we do it right, we will see our military families thrive,” he continued. “Helping veterans and military spouses find their new tribe—a place where they belong after they leave the military, with a quality employer and a meaningful career—is essential. The second aspect is financial security. If we can help families be more proactive, better manage their finances and carry less debt at the end of the day, we reduce stress and strengthen overall well-being. That’s why we’re doing all this together. USAA has a powerful brand and a powerful voice. We need to use that brand and that voice to advocate more proactively for the military community across careers, financial security, and well-being, including caregiver and childcare support.
“We’re putting real investment behind this—$500 million over five years. My hope with this is to make a statement that says, ‘Listen, there are a lot of organizations out there providing support along the lines that we talked about, but it’s very fragmented. What we would like to do is really provide that umbrella, that structure, so we can help coordinate all these efforts and provide the funding behind them, so they can be very successful at what they do.’ So, we’re going to be partnering with all kinds of people, whether it’s Hiring for Heroes, Team Rubicon, or the Armed Forces YMCA, to be able to help do this on the ground.”
While encouraging employers to hire transitioning service members and providing financial education and well-being certainly benefits veterans, Andrade also recognizes the larger impact of these initiatives. “
“Readiness begins with resilience on the home front. If you have a military spouse who is the CFO of the family, we need to make sure that while that service member is deployed, he or she is not worrying about financial stuff back home. And we need that spouse not to have to worry about how to feed their family,” Andrade said. “Families need to be mission-ready too, not worried about where their next paycheck will come from. The easier we make it on the service member to focus on their mission; our force readiness increases. It’s not just a veteran issue or a military family issue; it becomes a national security issue. This is who we are. This is our mission. At the end of the day, we were founded by 25 soldiers who came together, 103 years ago, because they couldn’t get auto insurance. And that was not about business; that was about trusting each other. For us, continuing to maintain that trust and earn that trust with our members every day, is at the core of who we are and why we exist.”
Learn more about the Honor Through Action campaign at usaa.com/veteransday and follow the conversation using #HonorThroughAction.
