Some pieces of info related to Australia in the pdf of Amex Investor Day 2024

[Mr He]

Some pieces of information related to Australia in the pdf of American Express Investor Day 2024 (a fun read! Here is the link: https://s26.q4cdn.com/747928648/files/doc_downloads/2024/04/American-Express-Investor-Day-2024.pdf )

1. Amex has highlighted where they excel, i.e., US Premium Consumer, US Millennials/Gen Z, US Small Business, and International!
2. Australia is one of Amex’s top 5 international countries, and ranks only next to Mexico but ahead of the UK, Japan and Canada. That’s quite impressive, given our small population.
3. Only 3% of SMEs have an Amex SBS card in Australia, showing a lot room to grow.
4. In 2018, Amex refreshed its Platinum card in Australia, and increased the annual fee from $1200 to $1450 by 21%. And as of 2023, compared to 2017, the number of accounts has been up by 2.5x.
5. Delinquency rate of Australian & UK Consumer Card Members is lower than the industry average. And from the data we can see Australia (0.4% vs. 1.2%) performs better than the UK (1.2% vs. 1.7%).
6. The Qantas logo has been twice displayed in pages that involve cobrand partnerships. As AFFers who hold Amex US-issued cards or are familiar with the US card market might know, Amex US only added Qantas as a transfer partner five years ago.

 

[levelnine]

Thanks for sharing. Always interested in the state of the credit card market, especially in Australia and the US.

 

[_TheTraveller_]

On point 4, I wonder how much of it is contributed by the culture of points hacking that really took off in the past few years.

Also potentially demographics shifting? millennials and Gen Zs coming into their prime working ages and making enough to sustain such a lifestyle.

 

[Mr He]

We can almost guess how many Amex business cards in circulation in Australia, by doing a simple calculation (Total number of SMEs 3%) . The result is below 80,000 (around 77,500), indeed a quite low number.
In the US, Amex has 3.9 million small business customers, already making it the leader in the country.

 

[SCM]

I think AMEX value for money has gone down a lot, and the offers are not very good these days, very surprising so many customers have signed up.

 

[SYD]

I think AMEX value for money has gone down a lot, and the offers are not very good these days, very surprising so many customers have signed up.

For SMEs, it can be easier to get. As an existing (long term) AMEX card holder, I had no issue getting a QF Biz card (not a QBR card) when I set up my company. WBC and others wanted to see 3yrs trading history.