What's sad is that, at least in theory, a USAA CEO doesn't necessarily need to have served to be an effective CEO. Just like an O1 Officer would be wise to listen to and seek guidance and consult his/her senior NCOs, a non-military affiliated CEO would be wise to take counsel and guidance from their direct reports who have served.
The problem is that Wayne forced out the true leaders of the company and replaced them with sl--e ball big bank rejects who can barely spell USAF or USMC, let alone know what it means to serve. We lost people like Jim Syring so this failure of a CEO could "have his turn."
Well, he got his turn and USAA turns its first loss basically ever. Wayne follows the direction of consultants who have never worked in industry, brings in executives from publicly traded companies who only understand quarterly profits, and starts running the company into the ground.
How the board hasn't yeeted Wayne into traffic on I10 by now is beyond me. Nothing adds up.
He gets an enormous raise the same year the company posts a loss.
Member satisfaction by every metric is plummeting and they blame the economy rather than taking ownership for their deteriorating service and lackluster products.
Employee morale has never been lower, even under Davis. It's now way worse than it was under Davis.
The lying, gaslighting, manipulation, and deceit is downright sickening. It's hard to put into words just how bad Wayne's USAA has become. And that's just looking at the objective facts — no speculation, no rumors, no hyperbole, no misrepresentations.
Facts:
-
The bank has zero compelling products. Checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, CDs, auto loans, and mortgages are all mediocre at best and horrendous at worst. After USAA got rid of its only compelling product (the 2.5% cash back Visa), it lost every differentiating product. Checking and savings APYs are abysmal. Auto loan rates are average. Mortgage rates are worse than average. CD rates are fine but no different than other banks.
-
USAA's insurance is too expensive and can no longer be justified or rationalized by the service. MSRs are stretched way too thin and have to multitask way too much to give members the level of service they have come to expect.
-
The company posted its first loss on its centennial birthday. (I say "first" because I don't even count 1923... the company barely existed then.)
-
Wayne's salary goes from $1.9m to $4.8m just from the P&C company in 2022, the same year as its first loss. What he made from other areas of the company aren't known.
-
Wayne implements widely unpopular RTO policies and chose not to deliver the message himself, instead choosing to let immediate people managers be the bearers of the bad news.
-
Employee morale has been decimated by senior leaders.
None of those are speculation, none of them are rumors. We can speculate that Wayne chose RTO to force attrition, but that's easy for them to say "Nuh uh! We did it for the culture! Now get back to work." But they can't deny any of the above.
Members on all forms of social media are noticing the changes. Just look on the USAA subreddit: Members are bashing this failure of a CEO who never served, asking why he gave himself a huge raise using their money when the company had its first loss, asking why service has become so poor, asking why their rates are skyrocketing, the list goes on. Social media will always be more tilted to the negative for any company, but these members are expressing legitimate concerns. These aren't Karens running to the Internet to say "I didn't pay my bill for 6 months and USAA cancelled my policy, wtf?!?!?"
USAA as of now has a mostly good reputation among the general public, but that's all it has left: its reputation. The company has been resting on its laurels for years and no longer comes close to living up to its reputation when looked at with any level of objectivity.