USBA founder Herb Swarthout with military leaders and early USBA executives.
If you serve, your life insurance should stand with you, not abandon you the moment your service puts you in harm’s way. Sadly, that’s not always how the industry has worked.
For decades, a policy exclusion known as the War Clause was standard in life insurance contracts. Born out of World War I and World War II, when insurers faced overwhelming combat casualties, the clause let companies deny payouts if a policyholder died as a result of war, combat, or hazardous duty. Through the Korean War era, insurers kept applying it, and families of fallen service members risked being denied the benefits they were counting on. By the 1950s, it was so common that military families rarely questioned it. They simply lived with the risk, year after year, because it was simply how the industry worked.
USBA founder Herb Swarthout saw it differently. In 1959, he built The Uniformed Services Benefit Association® on a single non-negotiable principle: coverage that honors service instead of excluding it. USBA became one of the first associations in the country to eliminate the war clause entirely, creating group life insurance made specifically for the military community, with no exclusions tied to combat or duty status. It was designed from day one to address the needs of active-duty members who struggled to find coverage that held up when it mattered most.
That decision didn’t just create a better product. It challenged an industry norm and helped move the broader conversation around military coverage forward, proving that protecting service members and running a financially responsible business weren’t mutually exclusive. Other organizations took notice, and over time, the way the industry approached military coverage began to shift for the better, one policyholder at a time.
Early USBA staff gathered outside the former USBA Building in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.
More than 65 years later, that founding principle hasn’t changed. Whatever your mission looks like today, USBA coverage is built to be there when your family needs it, without fine print quietly working against you in the moments that matter most.
Supported by a strategic alliance with New York Life Insurance Company for more than 30 years, USBA has proudly served military families for over six decades. Learn how USBA continues that commitment today.
Military service member reunites with his spouse in an aircraft hangar as other service members and families gather nearby. (Photo by Senior Airman Lauren Diaz)
The appearance of U.S. Department of War (DoW) visual information does not imply or constitute DoW endorsement.