# USAA Federal Savings Bank: Virtual assistant

Source: https://www.bankingnewsai.com/banks/usaa/virtual-assistant
Last updated: Oct 16, 2026

*Part of the [USAA Federal Savings Bank AI strategy profile](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/banks/usaa).*

## What virtual assistants and AI service tools does USAA use?

USAA runs AI on both sides of a member conversation. Members meet EVA, the personal assistant in the USAA app, which since the April 2022 app upgrade uses machine learning to surface personalised alerts and supports natural-language search, and a customer-facing chatbot that chief data, analytics and AI officer Ramnik Bajaj said rolled out in June 2024 and could tackle 60% to 65% of all consumer queries. Service staff get generative-AI tools built with Google's Vertex AI that transcribe calls and suggest actions, a front-office assistant that answers questions from 20,000 knowledge documents, and EagleGPT for general knowledge work. The 2025 annual report plans an AI phone-routing system that understands conversational speech for 2026. USAA's patents describe the routing logic: US 12,381,961 (August 2025) sends a request to a call center when a sentiment value crosses a threshold, and US 12,568,172 (March 2026) scores call sentiment in real time. Since 2021 the bank has used NLP to work out why members call. USAA has not published containment, volume or satisfaction figures for EVA or the chatbot beyond the 60% to 65% figure. ([USAA News](https://newsroom.usaa360.com/news/usaa-improving-member-experience-with-faster-modernized-mobile-app), [Bank Automation News](https://bankautomationnews.com/banking/usaa-aims-to-unplug-the-keyboard-with-gen-ai), [TechTarget](https://www.techtarget.com/ai/news/366623771/USAA-takes-an-experiment-and-see-approach-with-AI), [USAA](https://static.usaa.com/content/dam/digital/documents/pdf/brand/2025-annual-report-to-members.pdf), [Google Patents (USPTO)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US12381961B1/en), [Google Patents (USPTO)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US12568172B1/en), [USAA News](https://newsroom.usaa360.com/news/how-usaa-is-utilizing-natural-language-processing-to-improve-the-member-experience))

## Which AI assistants do USAA members and staff use?

| Tool | Used by | What it does | Since | Sources |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| EVA | Members (app) | Personal assistant that understands member needs and customises the app with past-due bill, travel and catastrophe alerts and life-event advice; predictive natural-language search | April 2022 app upgrade | [USAA News](https://newsroom.usaa360.com/news/usaa-improving-member-experience-with-faster-modernized-mobile-app) |
| Customer-facing chatbot | Members | Generative-AI chatbot that 'is already able to tackle 60% to 65% of all consumer queries' | June 2024 | [Bank Automation News](https://bankautomationnews.com/banking/usaa-aims-to-unplug-the-keyboard-with-gen-ai) |
| Service co-pilot | Member-service representatives | Finds answers and summarises interactions; assessed in a lab before broad rollout | 2024 | [MIT Sloan Management Review](https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-genai-helps-usaa-innovate) |
| Vertex AI call tools | Member-service representatives | Transcribe calls and suggest action items while staff answer member queries | April 2025 | [Bank Automation News](https://bankautomationnews.com/banking/usaa-aims-to-unplug-the-keyboard-with-gen-ai) |
| Front-office answer assistant | Call-center staff | Answers questions from 20,000 knowledge documents instead of staff searching and reading them | May 2025 | [TechTarget](https://www.techtarget.com/ai/news/366623771/USAA-takes-an-experiment-and-see-approach-with-AI) |
| EagleGPT | Workforce | Generative-AI assistant for knowledge work | May 2025 | [TechTarget](https://www.techtarget.com/ai/news/366623771/USAA-takes-an-experiment-and-see-approach-with-AI) |
| AI phone routing | Members (phone) | Understands conversational speech to connect members with the right service option | Planned for 2026 | [USAA](https://static.usaa.com/content/dam/digital/documents/pdf/brand/2025-annual-report-to-members.pdf) |
| Call-reason NLP | USAA Bank | Automatically identifies why members are calling, replacing manual review of calls and transcripts | October 2021 | [USAA News](https://newsroom.usaa360.com/news/how-usaa-is-utilizing-natural-language-processing-to-improve-the-member-experience) |

## What do USAA's patents say about its assistant and routing technology?

| Number | What it covers | Status | Date | Sources |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| US 12,381,961 B1 | Virtual assistant routing: determines the user's intent and a sentiment value, routing to a call center if the value meets a threshold | Granted | August 5, 2025 | [Google Patents (USPTO)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US12381961B1/en) |
| US 12,568,172 B1 | Machine-learning call routing: real-time sentiment score of a call between a person and a representative | Granted | March 3, 2026 | [Google Patents (USPTO)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US12568172B1/en) |
| US 12,572,824 B1 | A personalised AI bot generated from a user's data that navigates a network to perform interactions | Granted | March 10, 2026 | [Google Patents (USPTO)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US12572824B1/en) |
| US 12,632,870 B1 | Machine learning builds a node graph of tasks from a customer and service-representative communication | Granted | May 19, 2026 | [Google Patents (USPTO)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US12632870B1/en) |
| US 12,277,930 B1 | Recipient-customised generative voice modelling from recorded operator audio and a script | Granted | April 15, 2025 | [Google Patents (USPTO)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US12277930B1/en) |

## What has USAA not said about its virtual assistant?

USAA has not named the model behind the member chatbot. Bajaj said in May 2025 that USAA uses Google's Gemini models extensively, works with AWS Bedrock and IBM and picks the platform per use case, and in April 2025 that staff are trained on models that don't hallucinate. ([TechTarget](https://www.techtarget.com/ai/news/366623771/USAA-takes-an-experiment-and-see-approach-with-AI), [Bank Automation News](https://bankautomationnews.com/banking/usaa-aims-to-unplug-the-keyboard-with-gen-ai))

Beyond the 60% to 65% query figure, no usage, containment or satisfaction numbers are public for EVA or the chatbot, and the bank does not report assistant metrics separately from the USAA enterprise. Assistant patents are granted to the parent and do not show which inventions are in production. ([Bank Automation News](https://bankautomationnews.com/banking/usaa-aims-to-unplug-the-keyboard-with-gen-ai), [USAA](https://www.usaa.com/about/artificial-intelligence/))

## What does the USAA profile record on this topic?

| Date | Move | Detail | Sources |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Apr 23, 2026 | 2025 annual report to members describes AI results | Fast Track AI waiving life-insurance medical exams (45% on track against a 40% goal), machine learning speeding underwriting, planned 2026 AI phone routing, more than 240 AI-space patents and nearly 8 billion cyberthreats blocked. | [USAA](https://static.usaa.com/content/dam/digital/documents/pdf/brand/2025-annual-report-to-members.pdf), [USAA via Business Wire](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260423855227/en/USAA-2025-Annual-Report-Reflects-a-Year-of-Strength-Service-and-Commitment-to-Members) |
| May 13, 2025 | TechTarget interview: EagleGPT, code assist and an AI council | Bajaj describes EagleGPT for the workforce, code assist for all software engineers, a front-office AI over 20,000 documents, a Watsonx Orchestrate agent for data-access requests, and an AI council with four executive-council members; about a dozen gen-AI solutions were implemented in 2024. | [TechTarget](https://www.techtarget.com/ai/news/366623771/USAA-takes-an-experiment-and-see-approach-with-AI) |
| Apr 18, 2025 | 'Unplug the keyboard': gen AI for member-service teams | At Google Cloud Next, Bajaj says tools built with Google's Vertex AI transcribe calls and suggest action items for staff while they answer member queries. | [Bank Automation News](https://bankautomationnews.com/banking/usaa-aims-to-unplug-the-keyboard-with-gen-ai) |
| Apr 15, 2025 | Patent granted: recipient customised generative voice modelling | US 12,277,930 B1, assigned to USAA: previously recorded operator audio is combined with a script to generate audio content modified by insights derived from a client's speech. | [Google Patents (USPTO)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US12277930B1/en) |
| Oct 23, 2024 | MIT Sloan Management Review profiles USAA's gen-AI programme | Hundreds of AI solutions already deployed; a gen-AI pair-programmer rolled out to engineers and analysts; a service-representative co-pilot to be assessed in a lab before broad rollout; an AI Aware course for all 38,000 employees; internally facing tools first. | [MIT Sloan Management Review](https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-genai-helps-usaa-innovate) |

## Common questions

### What is EVA at USAA?

EVA is the personal assistant in the USAA mobile app. In the April 2022 app upgrade, USAA said EVA understands individual member needs and customises the app to show items such as past-due bills, travel and catastrophe alerts and life-event advice, alongside predictive search that lets members type or talk normally.

### How much of member traffic does USAA's chatbot handle?

Ramnik Bajaj, chief data, analytics and AI officer, said at Google Cloud Next in April 2025 that USAA rolled out its customer-facing chatbot in June 2024 and that the model was already able to tackle 60% to 65% of all consumer queries. USAA has not updated the figure publicly.

### Does USAA use AI on phone calls?

Yes, for staff. Generative-AI tools built with Google's Vertex AI transcribe calls and suggest next actions, and a front-office assistant answers questions from 20,000 documents. The 2025 annual report plans an AI phone-routing system that understands conversational speech in 2026, and USAA holds granted patents on sentiment-based call and virtual-assistant routing.

### Which AI model powers USAA's assistants?

USAA has not named the model behind EVA or the member chatbot. Its AI chief has said USAA uses Google Gemini extensively, AWS Bedrock and IBM watsonx, watches open-weight models such as Meta Llama and trains its own models, choosing the platform per use case.
## Deeper on USAA

- [What AI research, patents and partnerships does USAA have?](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/banks/usaa/ai-research-patents-partnerships)
- [What is USAA's AI strategy, and what have its leaders said about it?](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/banks/usaa/ai-strategy)
- [How does USAA govern its use of AI?](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/banks/usaa/responsible-ai)


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