HSBC Premier offering you £200 to switch – and get the best Avios non-Amex credit card

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• rams1981 says:

  23 Jun23 June 10:06

  Polly, there is no monthly fee with the account.

  You have 6 weeks to get your account meeting their criteria. If you then fail to meet the criteria they may write to you and downgrade your account. That doesn’t say what will happen to your credit card which you’ve paid for and so should be entitled to keep (or perhaps not if no longer eligible)?

  I set up my account last week once I saw Supercard charging for UK transactions. Tax man needs to be paid and 0.7% fee for the credit card made me think it’s worth it.

• rams1981 says:

  23 Jun23 June 10:07

  to be clear you have to do a full switch (i.e. which closes your old account) for this to work

• rams1981 says:

  23 Jun23 June 10:11

  and the wording to me suggests you’ll only get the bonus for spending 12k after the anniversary by which point you’ll have spent another £195 on the card.

  It was also confirmed to me that’s a one off anniversary bonus and as it stands you won’t get it for year 2 unless they implement it later.

  • Polly says:

    23 Jun23 June 16:08

    Thanks for that info. Will see what they say tomorrow….

• Craig says:

  23 Jun23 June 10:16

  Just contacted them as I was tempted to switch my current account and cash ISA from First Direct. But apparently the latter doesn’t qualify as an investment product!!

  • Scottnothing says:

    23 Jun23 June 10:44

    A cash ISA isn’t an “investment product” but a stocks and shares ISA is (or at least used to be) for the purposes of Premier eligibility.

  • Craig says:

    23 Jun23 June 13:24

    I was talking about moving my cash ISA to HSBC in addition to my current account. I’ll have to have a look at a life insurance product instead.

• danksy says:

  23 Jun23 June 11:19

  I’m interested now… this makes it an interesting prospect!

• PeterC says:

  23 Jun23 June 11:24

  I am an existing HSBC customer and was a Premier customer a number of years ago when I had a mortgage with them, but I lost it when I remortaged with another provider at a better deal. The World Elite initiative stimulated me to look at Premier again, mainly for the points, but also for lounge access for when I am not flying Oneworld. Others have mentioned that the Relationship Manager is not much of an offering, and I would tend to agree, but I previously found it invaluable when I was travelling and had managed to screw up my account. The Manager was able to sort it all while I was on a longhaul flight. So, I have just signed up again in-branch (took about an hour) and these are my observations so far:

  Checking criteria: They carry out a credit check then-and-there and then go through your transactions to identify /verify your salary, plus ask about your outgoings, property values etc. So, if you are swapping to HSBC you will need to take along documentation to establish all that, plus photo ID and proof of address for anti-money laundering checks. (More on investment criteria below)

  World Elite card: you can apply at the same time as you upgrade instead of waiting for the free Premier MCard and then swapping it out. Service level for cards being sent out is 5 working days. Staff not overly familiar with this new product, so still not clear when the second tranche of 40k points gets paid – is it once the £10k is spent or on anniversary? In any case, I will revert to my trusty BMI Diamond MCard once I have burnt the £10k

  Investment requirements: You can set this up on-line through the Global Investment Centre (GIC), but beware that you may need to go through the call centre if you have current or previous multiple tax residency status. My updates took a couple of days to sort out and come through to the GIC platform for me to complete the registration. This may be relevant if you are cutting it fine for the 10 July deadline for the £200 offer. GIC call centre can take up to 40 minutes due to all the repetitive verbal disclaimers and consents (and it closes at 6pm). HSBC ISA products seem to be outside the GIC (on the HSBC website they are under the Everyday Banking tab), but I don’t know if they count as investment for Premier purposes. I have ISA elsewhere, which is why I went to GIC for an accumulator property fund (which qualifies for capital gains tax allowance), but is probably higher risk than a cash/income fund. I could not see a minimum value under Premier rules, but the Global Investment Centre requires a minimum £100 per investment transaction.

  £200 cash offer: this was not mentioned, so I need to go back and check whether I get that too – at least it will pay for the first year’s card fee !

  • Polly says:

    24 Jun24 June 17:41

    Hi Peter,
    Very clearly laid out comment.
    Got my elite card sorted today. They didn’t mention the £200 bonus for switching X 2 dds. Just wanted to make sure the conditions were met within 6 weeks, which I agreed. Def must ask for that £200 tho…as you say it covers the first years fee.
    Regarding the second bonus, at anniversary, as I was their first applicant in that branch, no info forthcoming. They insisted on me meeting the relationship manager too! Passed on making an apt with them until a future date! They said to check the rewards parts of the statement, if and when the £12k is spent, to ask about the bonus. Just got a big hard reminder for a few K, so that will be the first spend. Reckon they will apply rewards it the day of the anniversary, and then we could immediately cancel the card if ness. As we would have two weeks from statement to payment. All up in the air. They have had many enquiries about this card, probably some HFP ers!
    Will hold onto our free BACC and see how this elite card works out.

• Rob says:

  23 Jun23 June 11:41

  Correct, I should have made that clearer.

• Daftboy says:

  23 Jun23 June 12:19

  One of the criteria is an “investment, life insurance or protection product” – protection product would appear to include HSBC home insurance, and with a renewal due anyway I’ve just had a quote online for this for £71 for the year. The underlying insurer is Aviva, and my pending renewal with the same would be £150!

  Anyway, an option for anyone who doesn’t have £50k sloshing about to stick in an investment ISA….

  A question – is “annual income of £100k” gross or net?

  • Seb says:

    23 Jun23 June 15:41

    Annual income is gross

    • Daftboy says:

      23 Jun23 June 16:27

      Thought so, but always worth checking!

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