BYLAWS ARTICLE 12 SURPLUS
DISTRIBUTION TO MEMBERS
Section 2. The Surplus in excess of that required by regulatory authorities or for the financial stability of USAA as determined by the board of directors shall be returned to members under rules formulated by the board of directors
Once upon a time this was in excess of regulatory minimums as determined by the board. Either way, for decades it's been used to keep rain day excess out of the subscriber accounts (SSA) where it truly belongs. Also notice the avoidance of terms like retained earnings or similar themes in the annual report to members. The right amount of surplus to holdback was a controversial theme in the 1930s and 1940s USAA, back when subscribers paid attention.
If surplus was more fully distributed, it would become more apparent to subscriber members when net worth dropped 30% or when token "symbolic" distributions of retained earnings from 100 prior years of earnings were used to as part of a "prestidigitation" the redirect their attention from the reality of poor c-suite decisions.
Sadly, as I see it. Today's subscribers by and large aren't aware that they own the RE and don't care about suboptimal fiduciaries guiding the ship downward. For subscribers, many don't realize it's money that should have been in their subscriber accounts that is being spent on jet fuel, oversized campuses, and amateur hour decisions across so many functional areas from investment to modernization to platform development.
So instead of 3 million members expecting 12 - 18 x earnings on open market from their equivalent % of the full company, they get little tokens in their SSA while a closed nomination board and closely tied c-suite treat 100 years of members money as their arms length discretionary fund.
Once upon a time though, there was something very special in USAA.