Brissy1, something that was shared with me on another forum.
It's not mine but I have permission to share it.
It's the best analysis I have read to date.
"For background, a material term of the fee free for life deal was that Citi would not charge an annual fee for cardholders for so long as they held the specific card (i.e. for life)… This was subject to Citi's market standard right to change other product features or change fees (except annual fees), which are in turn subject to financial services law. E.g. the 'significant event notice' 1017B requirement.
It's worth noting that many cardholders who originally signed up held the Citi 'Signature' card, which Citi then migrated over (both FFFL and regular cardholders) to the Citi 'Premier' card and the FFFL cardholders retained the $0 annual fee. I think this same change happend for other Citi FFFL cards too but I'm not sure.
NAB then acquired the Citi business in 2022 and Citi assigned the rights/obligations under the existing credit card contracts to NAB. From this point the issuer of the cards was NAB and the $0 annual fee still applies.
If NAB were to try to introduce a fee for the FFFL cardholders at this stage, I would say:
The standard provisions in their t&cs are subject to the initial agreement with Citi for a $0 fee for life, - noting that previous card branding and product changes didn't trigger a change to the fee by Citi or NAB - and any time a product transfer or change had occurred the original $0 fee was honoured. (I.e. it might be a different scenario if the product itself was withdrawn from the market with no transfers occurring with any cardholder)
If NAB assert that they nonetheless have the right to introduce an annual fee because of the condition of holding the original card is no longer met, this is problematic for them because someone could argue (a) it may breach their obligation to act 'efficiently, honestly and fairly' (see 912A(1)(a)) noting that this is a longstanding arrangement honoured since ~2014 by Citi and then NAB once they were assigned the contracts (b) there may be an equitable estoppel or similar remedy, given the cards have been issued under a FFFL arrangement since ~2014
There's probably other legal reasons to support the argument but, ultimately, when NAB bought the business off Citi they 100% would have completed due diligence and known that a subset of cardholders were under $0 annual fees. So they should just cop the loss (if any) on these cardholders and they will reduce through attrition"
The word "assigned" addresses your transfer of ownership observation.
The proper context is "NAB then acquired the Citi business in 2022 and Citi assigned the rights/obligations under the existing credit card contracts to NAB".
