What kind of company is USAA?
The United Services Automobile Association has a funny legal structure: it's not a corporation and has no shareholders. Policyholders and account holders are paid any profits. In that respect, it functions very much like a credit union; technically, it's structured as a Texas-based and Texas Department of Insurance regulated unincorporated reciprocal inter-insurance exchange and Fortune 500 financial services company offering banking, investing, and insurance to people and families that serve, or served, in the United States military. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAA Normally a company like this is a corporation so that its owners can benefit from limited liability: otherwise, if the company loses millions or billions, any one of the individual owners / members could be held liable for paying those millions and billions! However, the Texas laws which govern them as a Texas-based inter-insurance exchange also serve to limit the liability of members. The banking services are provided by the USAA Federal Savings Bank, which is structured as a  (drumroll) federal savings bank. They also own a couple of other random businesses.
"Probably not, though there are a few things to be said for understanding what you are doing here.  Primerica acts as an independent financial services firm and thus has various partners that specialize in various financial instruments and thus there may exist other firms that Primerica doesn't use that could offer better products.  Now, how much do you want to value your time as it could take more than a few months to go through every possible insurance firm and broker to see what rate you could get for the specific insurance you want.  There is also the question of what constitutes best here.  Is it paying the minimal premiums before getting a payout?  That would be my interpretation though this requires some amazing guesswork to know when to start paying a policy to pay out so quickly that the insurance company takes a major loss on the policy. Similarly, there are thousands of mutual funds out there and it is incredibly difficult to determine which ones would be best for your situation.  How much risk do you want to take?  How often do you plan to add to it?  What kind of accounts are you using for these investments, e.g. IRAs or just regular taxable accounts?  Do tax implications of the investments matter? Thus, I'd likely want to suggest you consider this question: How much trust do you have that this company will work well for you in handling the duty of managing your investments and insurance needs?  If you trust them, then buy what they suggest.  If you don't, then buy somewhere else but be careful about what kind of price are you prepared to pay to find the mythical ""best"" as those usually only become clear in hindsight. When it comes to trusting a company in case, there are more than a few factors I'd likely use: Questions - How well do they answer your questions or concerns from your perspective?  Do you feel that these are being treated with respect or do you get the feeling they want to say, ""What the heck are you thinking for asking that?"" in a kind of conceited perspective. Structure of meeting - Do you like to have an agenda and things all planned out or are you more of the spontaneous, ""We'll figure it out"" kind of person?  This is about how well do they know you and set things up to suit you well. Tone of talk - Do you feel valued in having these conversations and working through various exercises with the representative?  This is kind of like 1 though it would include requests they have for you. Employee turnover - How long has this person been with Primerica?  Do they generally lose people frequently?  Are you OK with your file being passed around like a hot potato?  Not that it necessarily will but just consider the possibility here. Reputation can be a factor though I'd not really use it much as some people can find those bad apples that aren't there anymore and so it isn't an issue now.  In some ways you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you.  There are more than a few companies that want to get a piece of what you'll invest, buy, and use when it comes to financial products so it may be a good idea to shop around a little." "Some history: In the US, this is very tightly controlled and regulated. Although stock market securities insider trading is a relatively new crime around the world (20-30 year old), the United States  is exceptional for offering the longest sentences for it, although it is still far more lucrative than and carries lower sentences than something like petty larceny. The perception of illegal insider trading has changed in the US over the years, although it is based on much older fraud statutes the regulators and the courts have only really developed modern case law against insider trading in the past 20-30 years. The US relies on its vast network of registered broker-dealers to detect and report abnormal trading activity and the regulator (SEC) can quickly obtain emergency court orders from rent-a-judges (Administrative Law Judges) to freeze trader's assets to prevent them from withdrawing, or quickly enacting sanctions. So this reality helps deter trading on material inside information. So for someone that needs to get an information advantage on the market, it is [simply] necessary for them to rationalize how this information could be inferred from public sources.  Similarly there is a thin line between non-public information and public information, the ""lab experiment"" example would be material insider information, but the fact that there will be litigation over a company's key patents may be ""public"" as soon as the lawyer submits the complaint to the court system. It is also worth noting that there are A LOT of financial products trading in the capital markets, and illegal insider trading laws only applies to trading of shares of a company. So if a major holder in gold is about to liquidate all their holdings, being short gold futures is not subject to civil and criminal sanctions. Hope this helps. The above examples should help you understand what kind of information is material inside information and what kind is not, and how it is relevant to trading decisions." "&gt; how the market going up and down in dramatic fashions due to speculative behavior by traders (of any kind) should have the power to decide the worth of thousands of companies going about their normal business.  Wow. I don't even know where to start.  First: why shouldn't traders be able to decide (as a group) what the companies are worth? If not them, who? Some committee you and your friends in the government get to appoint?  Second: do you really think that intraday (or even intraweek) prices are really representative of what ""the market"" thinks a company is valued at?   Third: compared to the effect of long term buy and holders changing their mind about a company, the effect of any HFT people on the valuation of a stock is practically nothing - like I said, there's just about no evidence of speculators causing significant mispricing over any significant period.   Fourth: there's no credible evidence that outside of individual events like the Knight Capital farce HFT has actually increased volatility." If they specifically ask you this, don't try to make something up. If you know something about the company that actually interests you, you can start with that.   You can ask questions on what kinds of benefits/incentives they receive, their culture, or how they do things differently at their company.   IMO you can try to redirect this to how you think the fintech industry and position are right for you- that you want to do challenging work, solve difficult problems, work with incredibly smart people, and improve your skills and gain experience, and how you have read/heard that the company a big player in the industry, is well known for all of the above and is the right place for you to achieve your goals. (Why did you apply in the first place?) See, this is the hard part. Getting people to believe that Insurance companies especially, but most industries have a saturated market, and your being dead means jack to them.   Your life is at best meaningless to industry. To insurance companies, tobacco companies, arms manufacturers and many others, your death is a net positive. I have my own opinions on what big gov't feels. But let's say Washington is too busy giving weapons systems mfrs. money to friends to care about *you*. Okay so I have just had a phone call with US Ambassy in CZ and they told me that ESTA is only for business trips without earning any money in US ...  So that I will need a US entity (some company/person) to sign some kind of petition for my models before they travel to US and vouch for them ...  Is that correct? Anybody knows how much that costs?  Also they gave me this website: https://www.uscis.gov/  And said it has to be all arranged in US, that they can't do anything on their CZ part. Do u mean like a company cafeteria/dining area within the building that runs its own numbers? Or a recent acquisition that still functions as its own entity? I think Google is a great example in general as it owns a lot of smaller companies. Just some ideas, hope it helps! HSA accounts come with various rules intended to ensure that the pre-tax money you have opted to put into your HSA account is indeed used for appropriate purposes. Most employers don't handle these accounts in-house but contract with a company or bank who offers to take care of the details and the necessary accounting: the money is simply sent to the bank, and it is the bank that is responsible for ensuring that the money is indeed used appropriately. Now, if you say that you want Wells Fargo (to pick another bank as an example) to handle your HSA account, the  employer will likely need to have a  contract with Wells Fargo too, and Wells Fargo will charge you fees to handle  the account also.  Whether you will be any happier with Wells Fargo's fees for a one-off HSA account versus Chase's fees where a (smaller) bulk rate might be charged is something that you should find out before approaching your employer with a request to have Wells Fargo handle your HSA account.