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Comment by willis936 | Hacker News Reader

USAA doesn't operate its own mortgages anymore. They sell them day one which usually results in another sale or company acquisition within a year. The cure? Take your business elsewhere. FCUs don't have this same reputation and generally open with less predatory rates.

USAA had a great run of building trust and is speedrunning torching it.

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What does this have to do with their insurance business? As far as I can tell this is just a random complaint about USAA.

And it doesn’t even make sense financially. The “brand” of your mortgage provider adds absolutely nothing to the utility. When shopping for a mortgage, just pick the lowest possible rate, it does not matter from whom. Loans get sold all the time and that is a good thing as it helps minimize rates through raw competition.

USAA at one time had aims of being a comprehensive financial company and they gave those up years ago. Brokerages got sold to Schwab, IRAs to Victory, etc. Again, this is a good thing as there was no way they were going to be able to compete in all those categories. Specialization is good.

Who should people use instead? I switched to USAA because of their good reputation after bad experiences.

I’ve heard good things about Farmers and USAA. Never anything positive about another.

I use State Farm for insurance. They’ve have similar issues, but are also about to pay out their largest dividend of $5B to auto policy holders as a mutual company (owned by their policyholders) due to underwriting performance.

For mortgages, I can recommend Digital Federal Credit Union (DCU), now merged with First Tech. They held the note and the servicing.

https://sfdividend.com/

https://www.firsttechfed.com/merger

State Farm is slightly more expensive than others.

From a policy standpoint, this works out really well for them as the bottom feeders aren't their customers, so they have fewer claims.

Same, and the couple of times I had to use them for car insurance (and once for renters) over 20 years, they've been great. Thankfully, I haven't had to use them for home insurance yet.

Does USAA sell the servicing too? Most credit unions sell their mortgages, but as long as they retain the servicing rights (which seems to be less and less), the borrower should be in good hands.

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