Bank of America Premium Rewards Elite Credit Card Review
2023.6 Update: The new offer is 75k. This is the highest offer on this card.
Contents
Application Link
Benefits
- 75k offer: earn 75,000 points after spending $5,000 in first 90 days. This is the highest offer on this card.
- The points can be redeemed towards statement credit or deposited into BoA Checking/Savings account at 1:1 ratio. You can also redeem them in BoA travel portal and get a 20% off, so in this way the points could be worth 1.25 cents/point. Therefore the 75k signup bonus is worth about $937.5.
- Earning 2x points per dollar spent on travel and dining, earn 1.5x points elsewhere.
- BofA Rewards credit card rewards bonus: if you have a BoA checking account and your combined assets in BoA bank accounts + Merrill Edge investment accounts reach certain thresholds, you can receive a credit card rewards bonus. The most useful tiers include: Preferred Honors, which requires more than $100k in assets and provides a 50% rewards bonus; and Premier, which requires more than $1M in assets and provides a 75% rewards bonus.
- $300 Airline Incidental Credit: get up to $300 per calendar year in Airline Incidental Statement Credits for qualifying purchases like seat upgrades, baggage fees, in-flight services and airline lounge fees.
- $150 Lifestyle Credit: get up to $150 per calendar year in statement credits for lifestyle conveniences, including streaming services, food delivery, fitness subscriptions and rideshare services.
- Priority Pass Select (PPS) airport lounge access.
- $100 credit toward TSA Pre or Global Entry.
- No foreign transaction fee.
Disadvantages
- $550 annual fee, not waived first year.
Recommended Application Time
- We recommend you apply for this card after you have a credit history of at least one year.
- 2/3/4 Rule: BoA will only approve you for at most: 2 cards per rolling 2 months; 3 cards per rolling 12 months; and 4 cards per rolling 24 months. Because their IT system hasn’t been fully updated yet, you may not get declined because of this rule. Instead, you may get approved at first, and then the account will be closed because of “approved in error”.
- This card will not be available to you if you currently have or have had the card in the preceding 24 month period.
Summary
This card is basically a slightly upgraded version of the BoA Premium Rewards, with the same rewards structure. The annual fee is $550. Even if you can easily use the $300 + $150 in annual credits, that still leaves $100 of the annual fee uncovered, so you can basically think of that as the cost of the Priority Pass membership.
One useful feature of this card within BoA’s rewards ecosystem is point redemption. If you redeem points toward airfare booked through BoA’s own travel portal, you can get a fixed value of 1.25 cpp. If you have already accumulated a large balance of BoA points, redeeming them through this card can be quite worthwhile.
One of BoA’s biggest advantages is the rewards boost for customers with substantial assets. Suppose you have $100k in assets at Merrill Edge and qualify for the Preferred Honors tier. With the +50% rewards bonus, you would earn 3x on travel and dining and 2.25x on all other purchases! That is a very strong return for uncategorized spending. If you have $1M in assets and qualify for the Premier tier, you would earn 3.5x on travel and dining and 2.625x on all other purchases, which is even better.
If you also factor in the 25% boost when redeeming points toward airfare, this card’s effective return on uncategorized spending is among the highest of almost any credit card. That said, there are quite a few restrictions, and it is also unclear how good BoA’s own travel portal is in practice.
Overall, this card feels only so-so. For such a high annual fee, it is not competitive enough. It is probably best suited for someone who has already accumulated a large balance of BoA points, opens the card to redeem those points at the higher value, keeps it for a year, and then gets rid of it. If you ever decide that you no longer want to pay the annual fee on this card, don’t forget that BoA also offers the BoA Unlimited Cash and BoA Travel Rewards as downgrade options. Both have no annual fee, earn 1.5x on all purchases, and are also eligible for up to a 75% rewards bonus.
Related Credit Cards
- BoA Customized Cash
- BoA Unlimited Cash
- BoA Travel Rewards
- BoA Premium Rewards
- BoA Premium Rewards Elite (this post)
Best Downgrade Options
After Applying
- Click here to check BoA application status.
- BoA reconsideration backdoor number: 800-732-9194. It seems that the number is changing. Please inform us at once if it fails. The representatives here can get in touch with decision-makers directly.