USAA confirmed that it has laid off a second round of employees this year, five months after the company laid off 220 people.
A company spokesman declined to say how many workers would be affected by this round of cuts or where within the company they’d be coming from.
But a “near-transcript” of an employee meeting Wednesday morning shared with the San Antonio Report suggests the layoffs will come from USAA Federal Savings Bank, and will impact several teams, including first line risk, credit risk, data analytics, bank operations and consumer lending.
“We aren’t in a sustainable place,” employees were told by Michael Moran, the bank’s interim president, according to screenshots of the meeting record and an employee who attended. The layoffs, Moran said, were in service of “getting back to profitability and managing our risk well.”
Moran declined to confirm how many people would be laid off. He said the bank’s expenses have continued to outpace its revenue.
Employees had a host of questions, including whether more layoffs were coming. Moran said no additional cuts are currently planned, but he encouraged employees to “spend time on personal development to put yourself in the best possible position with the skills you need to be indispensible to the company and serving our members.”
He urged employees to adopt an “owner’s mindset” around managing expenses and driving improvements.
The bank has struggled in recent years. In 2020 and 2021, the bank posted $710 million in losses, according to the San Antonio Express-News. That same year, the bank was fined $140 million for “willful” violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and its regulations.
Since 2022, when the financial services and insurance giant experienced its first loss in company history, USAA has laid off more than 1,200 workers. At least two rounds of those layoffs have occurred among bank employees.
“We regularly evaluate our operations and adjust to serve our members more efficiently,” said spokesman Roger Wildermuth in a statement released Tuesday.
Regarding April’s layoffs of 220, Wildermuth said at the time that the company was making “necessary adjustments to run a healthy business and provide members with exceptional service and competitive prices.”
USAA “continues to hire across the company in line with changing businesses needs,” Wildermuth stated, noting that USAA had “filled 8,300 jobs so far this year.”
Employees on Wednesday referenced that number when they complained that they’d learned of the cuts via local media before hearing about it from company leaders. The layoffs were first reported by mysa.com.
Moran said about 500 company leaders were briefed on the layoffs Tuesday, with the plan to tell employees directly Wednesday morning. He called it “unfortunate” that the media published stories soon after those briefings.
Asked why USAA couldn’t simply cover the bank’s losses, Moran said the bank has “110% support” from USAA, but it is the responsibility of the bank’s leadership team and its employees to generate earnings and be profitable.
Despite the 8,300 hires, USAA’s overall workforce has remained at about 37,000 nationwide. Roughly 17,000 of those employees work in San Antonio.
In August, CEO Wayne Peacock announced he would retire in mid-2025 from the position he’s held since 2019. The board is doing an internal and external search for his replacement.
The first civilian to lead the organization, Peacock steered USAA through the pandemic, its first loss in its 102-year-history and its return to profitability in 2023.
USAA, which serves more than 13.5 million members, has reported being buffeted in recent years by inflation, high interest rates, uncertainty around global conflicts and a higher than average number of severe weather events, which led the company to raise its auto and homeowners insurance rates last year.
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Correction: The number of USAA employees based in San Antonio is roughly 17,000, per the company, not 19,000 as previously reported.
