Happy New Year! 2022 Wish List
Happy New Year Everyone!!
A new year means a new wish list. Note that we generally provide a mid-term report on Canada Day (July 1) and a final report on New Year’s Eve. To be fair, all wishes have the goal of being a win/win/win scenario for everyone: “loyalty company, credit card company and customer”. In some cases it is just win/win because one party is not involved; for example a credit card company who offers in-house loyalty program with the customer as the other party.
Grading System
Here’s a recap of the grading system:
- A+ Exceeding expectations with nothing more to improve on (almost impossible to achieve this grade, but I listed it to put some perspective on the spectrum)
- A Awesome job
- B+ Good job
- B Decent, met expectations
- C Acceptable
- D Better than nothing
- E Nothing changed, no improvements
- F Fail, went backwards
Now onto the wish list. I actually kept my list very similar to last year’s (minus the one about travel).
1) Either a new co-branded airline or hotel loyalty credit card
At this point, I am just being stubborn, there has to be at least one credit card company and one frequent flyer or hotel loyalty program who want to team up, right?
2) One credit card company making a significant jump
We recently published our post: Ranking the Credit Card Portfolios of Each Canadian Financial Institutions. In the list, no company actually made any significant moves to warrant a strong climb of the rankings in 2021. We actually saw the reverse effect with Capital One making the most significant drop.
This year, I hope to see one company break out from the rest!
3) More Progress Towards High Speed Trains
We may never see bullet trains in Canada, but at least it looks like there is ongoing progress towards more high speed trains of up to 200 kilometres per hour. Last year had a lot of nice announcements. This year, I am hoping to see more shovels in the ground!
4) A Brand New Transferable Points Program or New Partnership
The three companies who have the biggest opportunity to make this happen are CIBC Aventura, BMO Rewards or Scotiabank Scene+ (hope they offer more transfer partners than just Scene). Scotiabank might have an exclusive agreement with Scene, so they might be a long shot at this point now in terms of increasing their transfer partners. But that does not mean that another company, like CIBC or BMO cannot step up.
Furthermore, I would also be happy to see current transferable points programs like American Express Membership Rewards, HSBC Rewards or RBC Avion expand their partnerships. It feels like every few weeks, the U.S. based transferable points program are adding a new transfer partner. So I will settle for just one new partnership overall in an entire year in Canada. Considering that we can go years without any transferable program doing any sort of expansion, I will keep my wish low.
5) One Airline other than Air Canada Breaking Out
Historically, I have always wanted to see more credit cards that offer an incentive for people to be willing to pay the annual fee on renewal. But this year, I would like to change that up, since American Express has been stepped up in that area.
Instead, I am seeing Air Canada really pull ahead of all the other Canadian based airlines, to the point that it really feels like a monopoly (if it did not already). So for this year, I am hoping to see another airline break out from the rest and solidify themselves as a clear second choice airline in Canada.
What is on your wish list for year? Please let us know in the comment section below!