Credit card benefits are changing, see more

I have been using credit cards for over 30 years and have been covering the credit card industry as a journalist since 2008. Until two years ago, credit card benefits they were almost set in stone.

Nearly all cards offered rental car collision damage waiver (CDW) coverage, and the vast majority of premium travel credit cards had perks like extended warranty coverage, price protection, and car accident insurance. journey. Changes to these benefits were extremely rare and typically involved the card issuer offering additional benefits, not removing them.

But starting in 2018, these and other key benefits began to disappear from cards from some major issuers, including from some premium travel rewards cards that were known for their generous perks.

what has changed
The first indication that the terrain was turning came from Discover, which dropped five big benefits from all of its cards in February 2018. These benefits included extended product warranty, money-back guarantee, purchase protection, insurance car rental and flight accident insurance. All of these were benefits that I had considered standard on most credit cards. Discover's statement blamed "prolonged low use" as its reason for discontinuing these. credit card benefits

To understand why all these changes are happening, I spoke with Peter Alter, vice president of cbsi, the leading US provider of credit card protection and assistance benefits. Although they do not have a high public profile, cbsi works with card issuers to provide benefits that protect consumers from financial loss when something goes wrong with travel or retail purchases made with a covered account.

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It also provides valuable benefits for travelers, such as access to airport lounges and medical assistance. In fact, the cbsi offers benefits to more than 1,500 financial institutions, covering more than 400 million accounts for transactions such as credit cards, and has been doing so for more than 30 years.

When I asked about the underlying reasons credit card benefits are changing, Alter cited the increasing number of cardholder complaints about these benefits. He attributes this to several factors such as a good economy and the increase in international travel. (International travel generates higher claims than domestic travel.)

He also noted that car rental agencies are much stricter about damage and are even using new technology to detect, identify and ultimately bill customers for damage that might have previously gone unnoticed. Those damage claims are passed on to the card issuer's benefit providers, increasing the cost of offering those coverages and credit card benefits