Brandon Carter still remembers his first phone call selling life insurance for USAA Life Insurance Co. in 1997.
“It was a complex call, and my manager was sitting with me, and I was so nervous,” said Carter. He recalled electronic terminals that priced life insurance policies based only on the potential customer’s age and whether they were male or female.
“And half the time, the terminals were down, so you’d have to pull out your rate book, and do the math yourself,” he said. “Then we would print out packets and put them in the mail” to be filled out by the customer and sent back. It was a slow process.
Today, Brandon Carter is president of USAA Life, and those interested in taking out a policy can do it all online in minutes.
“You go online, you get a quote, you can apply via your mobile phone and … issue the policy without ever speaking to anyone,” he said.
Carter spoke to the San Antonio Report ahead of USAA Life’s 60th anniversary on Aug. 20. The company sold its first policy in 1963; today it holds more than 1 million policies. Carter, who spent much of his youth in San Antonio, described how the life insurance business has changed since he first began his career and what keeps him up at night.
USAA Life offers term and permanent life insurance along with annuities, and together with USAA Life General Agency, partners with other companies to offer some Medicare and health insurance products.
Unlike its other subsidiaries, USAA Life serves not just the military community but anyone in the general public. Carter said that’s the case because of how USAA Life’s charter was set up. Between 5% to 10% of its customers are not eligible for other USAA products, he estimated, because they or their family members are not military.
In 2021, USAA Life agreed to pay $90 million in the settlement of a class-action lawsuit alleging that holders of certain policies were systematically overcharged. The company disputed the allegations in the suit, denying any wrongdoing. The company did not respond to a question about whether that money has since been paid out.
Carter identified digital transformation as the biggest change to the industry over the past two decades. USAA Life has helped lead that transformation, claiming several electronic firsts over the years, starting with the allowance of digital signatures in 2008.
In 2017, USAA Life was one of the first to use electronic medical records; just two years later it began automating decisions based on those records. A process that used to take weeks, with humans poring over medical records sent manually to the company, can now be done almost instantly.
In 2021, the company created its first digital-only policy, which requires no medical exams for customers ages 21-35.
Announcing that new policy in early 2022, USAA Life said its annual survey found that monthly cost and no medical exam were among the most important factors for those considering life insurance.
Yet even as the company continues to create additional digital-only products and ways for customers to purchase life insurance and even file claims electronically, Carter said that almost half of its business is still people calling in to speak with customer service representatives, whom he said are USAA employees and not contractors.
Originally from the tiny hamlet of Littlefield in the Texas Panhandle, Carter first moved to San Antonio in eighth grade when his father took a job as a pastor at the historic First Baptist Church downtown. He attended Churchill High School before heading to Texas A&M University.
Carter has spent his entire career, minus a brief first job with a different life insurance company, at USAA Life. Prior to being named president, Carter served as general manager of the company’s 575-acre Phoenix campus, which includes almost 1 million square feet of office space.
He called Phoenix “an awesome second place I would call home,” with a lot of “San Antonio-ness to it.”
Carter was named president, and returned to San Antonio, in 2014. According to the San Antonio Express-News, he received $1.8 million in compensation in 2022, up from $1.2 million in 2021.
He serves on the board of Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), a nonprofit that provides “peer-based emotional support” to families grieving the death of military loved ones.
Carter is also leading Face the Fight, a USAA-led coalition of private companies, nonprofit and veteran-focused organizations that have committed more than $40 million to reduce veteran suicide.
“We started with a clear question to our members, ‘what matters to you?’ and what rose to the top was mental health, and very specifically, suicide among veterans.” Research with UT Health San Antonio ensued, he said, about ways the private sector could bolster existing efforts by the Veterans Administration and the Department of Defense.
Carter, who spent six years on the board of SAMMinistries focused on homelessness, especially among veterans, said his work with Face the Fight and TAPS is all of a piece with his day job.
“How can I make an impact both in financial security, through the products we sell, as well as the mental health security, protecting the mental health of those who have served, through suicide prevention and awareness?”
It is the security of USAA members that keeps him up at night, he said.
“People who served our country and their families, they tend to live closer to the line than others; they aren’t affluent,” he said. “Every dollar matters, so it’s incredibly important that we provide incredible financial advice and competitive products, to help them reach their goals and aspirations.”
USAA is a financial supporter of the San Antonio Report. For a full list of business members, click here.
