Doing the Right Thing vs. Doing the Legally Permitted Thing

In 2008, in Asheville, North Carolina, an acquaintance of mine – I’ll call him Joe – was riding his motorcycle to work when he was hit from behind by a car. The car’s driver had tried to avoid his motorcycle at the last minute by turning to the right, but unfortunately Joe (unaware of the approaching danger) turned to the right himself at the same time. So the car hit him squarely and then dragged him some distance, crushing his right leg and shattering his fibula just below the knee, causing it to fall inward and fuse to a lower part of the tibia.

Joe’s medical bills alone came to some $25,000, but the driver of the car who hit him only had the minimum for liability insurance in North Carolina at that time, which was $20,000. So Joe hired a lawyer to try to help him through the process.

His motorcycle was insured by Progressive, but Progressive refused to offer Joe any compensation at all, because while he was covered for un-insured drivers, he wasn't covered for under-insured drivers. Insurance is a complicated legal contract, of course, and there is a legal distinction to be made between uninsured and under-insured motorist coverage, but this still strikes me as not much more than a fine-print loophole, which Progressive was more than happy to scoot through.

As it happened, however, Joe also had USAA insurance coverage on his two cars. USAA is one of the most trustable financial services firms in the world, with an excellent reputation in auto coverage. His USAA auto policy covered under-insured motorists, and it also covered Joe when he was driving vehicles other than his own auto. The net result was that even though USAA wasn’t the primary insurer on Joe’s cycle, they paid out in full. Joe's lawyer told him that USAA didn’t even contest the claim.

I guess the point of this story is that some companies will hide behind technicalities, and they are perfectly entitled to do so. After all, a contract is a contract, no matter how fine the print is. But other companies step up and do the right thing, even when the technicalities might not require them to. In an email, Joe told me “this is a great example of a company doing good, not because they have to, but because it's part of their culture.”

Most companies are operated exclusively for profit. And while there’s certainly nothing wrong with this, legally or ethically, whenever a company is dedicated solely to financial success it has no room for showing empathy, either to customers or employees – because empathy has no financial value.

USAA is a profit-making company, also. But they are very serious about their corporate culture of service, and they hold everyone at the company responsible for putting “members’ interests first” and making decisions that serve their members well.

Joe told me he had been a USAA member for seven years at the time of the accident, but that he now plans to be one for the rest of his life. And USAA now also holds his IRA accounts as well, in large part because he trusts them to do their best, based on his past experience.

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Full disclosure: I have a relationship with USAA myself. I've been a member for more than 30 years, although I do not buy any insurance from them today. I've written about them in more than one book, and in 1999 Martha Rogers and I dedicated our fourth book together (The One to One Manager) to the then-recently retired CEO of USAA, Robert McDermott. A few years ago, Peppers & Rogers Group did some consulting work for USAA, and our parent company TeleTech has a relationship with the company, as well.