USAA is applying generative artificial intelligence across core operations to pull strategic insight from unstructured data, according to Ramnik Bajaj, senior vice president, chief data, analytics and AI at USAA. Its approach prioritizes scale, trust and adaptability across the enterprise. Rather than treating AI as an isolated experiment, USAA is building toward an enterprise-wide model that balances innovation with governance. Centralizing its data and gen AI capabilities has helped the company increase development velocity and model reliability, according to Bajaj. “I call it first-class data now that it is possible to do those types of analytics,” he said. “Having all of those in one place in the enterprise … really supercharges our ability to move fast and move responsibly. With a technology like gen AI, it’s important to also learn our way into the right architectural patterns that can give us not just speed to market, but also reliability [and] accuracy, preserving trust and … privacy. All of those core data management functions tie very well into that AI genre.” USAA doesn’t greenlight AI for AI’s sake. Each proposed use case goes through a structured evaluation process to ensure it will generate measurable business value, whether through revenue, efficiency, risk reduction or improved member experience, according to Bajaj. USAA is working closely with IBM to support its gen AI strategy, using watsonx and the Granite model family to extract structured elements from complex documents. This collaboration is key to turning claims data and underwriting materials into usable, trustworthy inputs for AI, according to Bajaj.