CommBank Awards recently added 7 new loyalty programs to its list of partners you can transfer your Awards points to.
Points with Commonwealth Bank’s credit card rewards program can now be transferred for the first time to the Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, Emirates Skywards, United MileagePlus and Air Canada Aeroplan frequent flyer programs. CommBank Awards also now offers the ability to convert its points to the Accor ALL, Marriott Bonvoy and Wyndham Rewards hotel loyalty programs.
On the face of it, that’s great news. More loyalty program partners means more ways to use your points. CommBank Awards now offers the ability to transfer to an impressively large range of airline & hotel loyalty programs – some of which aren’t offered as transfer partners by any other Australian bank.
But Commonwealth Bank has also just removed the option to transfer points to four other frequent flyer programs – and without warning. Point transfers from CommBank Awards to Japan Airlines Mileage Bank, Malaysia Airlines Enrich, Lufthansa Miles&More and China Eastern Miles, which were available earlier this year, are no longer possible.
With most other loyalty programs, members would be given advance notice of such changes. CommBank Awards does say in its terms & conditions that it will give at least 20 day’s notice of “material” program changes, but these kinds of changes are apparently not considered to be material. Other than this, CommBank Awards can change the way points are earned or redeemed at any time.
CommBank Awards claims to be Australia’s largest bank loyalty program. But for frequent flyers or people who care about collecting points that can be used for travel, it’s definitely not the most competitive loyalty program out there.
CommBank Awards credit cards earn points at a lower rate
One reason is that you’ll typically earn frequent flyer points at a lower rate with Commonwealth Bank than you would with other Australian credit cards.
For example, you’ll earn 1.25 Awards points per dollar spent (up to an annual cap) with CommBank’s top-earning credit card, the $349/year Diamond Awards card. That’s equivalent to 0.625 Velocity points, 0.41 KrisFlyer miles, 0.36 Emirates or Etihad miles, or just 0.31 Aeroplan points. Other CommBank Awards cards offer even lower earn rates.
The Australian credit card market is competitive and many other banks offer earn rates equivalent to up to 1 Qantas or Velocity point per dollar. Other Australian banks also consistently have better sign-up bonus offers than CommBank, which rarely ever makes our monthly lists of the top Qantas & Velocity credit card deals.
If you prefer to just earn Qantas points with your CommBank Awards credit card, you can opt-in to Qantas Frequent Flyer Direct for additional fee of $30 per year. But CommBank’s most premium credit cards – the Ultimate Awards and Diamond Awards cards – earn just 0.4 and 0.5 Qantas points per dollar, respectively, on everyday domestic spend. These earn rates are also capped.
(In February 2021, Qantas announced a “significant expansion” of its partnership with Commonwealth Bank which would be rolled out in the second half of 2021. We’ve since heard nothing more about this.)
The range of transfer partners is not published and keeps changing
On paper, CommBank Awards has an impressive list of partner frequent flyer and hotel loyalty programs. But in addition to poor conversion rates, the second major problem is that this list could change any time. This means you could spend years saving up in order to transfer your points to a program like Japan Airlines Mileage Bank, only for CommBank to cease its partnership with Japan Airlines when you actually want to use the points.
In fact, CommBank doesn’t even publish a full list of partner loyalty programs for the general public to see on its website. If you don’t already have a credit card account with the bank, the only way to find out what the current partners are is to call CommBank Awards.
There is lots of information on the CommBank Awards website about the products you can buy with your points, like vacuum cleaners and coffee machines. The option to transfer your points to an airline or hotel – which is highly valued by frequent flyers – seems to be an afterthought. (That’s probably why Commonwealth Bank has outsourced redemptions for frequent flyer points to a Singaporean company called Ascenda.)
We’ve called CommBank Awards on numerous occasions over the past few years to find out what their current transfer partners and point conversion rates are. Each time, we’ve been told something slightly different as new loyalty program partners are added, existing ones are removed or the conversion rate to a particular program changes.
For example, we’ve been told on different occasions that the rate at which CommBank Awards points could be converted to the Air France/KLM Flying Blue program was 2:1, 2.5:1 and 3:1. (It’s currently 2.5:1, but who knows if this will change again.)
Ultimately, this means CommBank Awards members cannot be certain that they’ll be able to use the points they’re accumulating for their desired redemption. That’s a problem.
It’s unusual for a loyalty program not to publish a full list of ways points can be used on its website for the general public to see. After all, the ability to transfer points to an airline or hotel loyalty program is a key consideration for many frequent flyers when choosing a credit card.
We’ve previously asked the CommBank Awards call centre why there isn’t a published list of airline & hotel transfer partners and conversion rates available to the public. They told us that the list is determined by Ascenda and can change, so they don’t want to make any representations or guarantees about what redemption options may be available in the future.
The only other Australian credit card we can think of which hides the full list of airline transfer partners is the Citi Prestige card that costs $700 per year. In this case, the Citibank website says:
With points transfer, you can easily transfer your Citi reward Points to a variety of Airline, Hotel and Other Loyalty Programs including: Emirates Skywards, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, flybuys and many more.
The only way to find out what the “many more” partners are is to go to the Citi Rewards website and log into your account. If you don’t already have a Prestige card, there’s no way to see the full list of partners.
When we called Citibank last year to ask what the other airline and hotel loyalty programs are, the staff at their call centre didn’t know either! They promised to call us back with this information but never did.
Minimal participation in Velocity promotions
Finally, CommBank Awards members routinely miss out on bonuses when transferring CommBank points to airlines.
Every May and November, Velocity Frequent Flyer offers around 15% bonus points on transfers from most major bank and hotel loyalty programs. These promos are run in partnership between Velocity Frequent Flyer and the other participating loyalty programs.
CommBank Awards is the only Australian credit card rewards program not participating in this month’s promotion. It did participate last November, but has usually been left off the list during other promotions. For whatever reason, it seems Commonwealth Bank has chosen not to participate in most of these promotions – even when every other Australian bank does.
CommBank Awards is not a terrible loyalty program. There is value in it. But there are so many other credit cards in the Australian market that offer better value to frequent flyers and are more transparent about how you can redeem your points for frequent flyer points and miles.
You can leave a comment or discuss this topic on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum.
