[Update 6/12/20: See updated information on how to get the $550 American Express Platinum Morgan Stanley annual fee credit in this post.]
[Update 1/9/20: Morgan Stanley has changed the requirements to keep the $45 monthly fee waived – you now need $5,000 deposited monthly and $50,000 balance.]
Earlier this year Bloomberg alluded to American Express & Morgan Stanley waiving the $450 annual fee on their co-branded Platinum card. Morgan Stanley offers something called Premier Cash Management as a way to reward customers that use Morgan Stanley for their everyday cash management needs. One of the benefits of this is receiving a $450 ‘annual engagement bonus’ if you’re also the primary cardholder and main Reserved status.
Qualification
To qualify for Premier Cash Management, you need to do the following for three months:
- Have $1,000,000 in funds with Morgan Stanley
- Bring in/keep cash:
- Have aggregate monthly direct deposits across all eligible accounts totaling at least $5,000
- Maintain $50,000 average daily balance in Sweep Money Market Funds, the Bank Deposit Program or any free cash across all accouts
- Do any two of the following:
-
Debit Card
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 Payments on Morgan Stanley Online
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Morgan Stanley Cards from American Express
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Check Writing
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Automated Clearing House (ACH) Transfers
-
Other Information
The person that passed this on also stated you’ll receive a 1099 for the $450 credit. There are also other benefits such as your AAA membership being waived, plus some other small benefits.
[Read:Â Different Flavors Of The American Express Platinum Card]
Our Verdict
Most people won’t have $1,000,000 in funds with Morgan Stanley that is necessary for Reserved client status, plus the requirements for Premier Cash Management. Obviously not worth moving such a large amount of funds and investments for a $450 credit either. I know some readers had asked about this though, so here you go even if it’s for idle curiosity sake.
This dialog is remarkably inane, and frankly not helpful. MS $1MM can be a in an acct that has no fees, and if you buy and hold equities or bonds, they ‘make’ $0 on you. MS can’t guarantee any performance, i.e, 3-10%…rather it’s all about your asset allocation, all in an S&P 500 fund since 2008, up almost three fold, but if you put in your $ at the pre 2008 highs, you are at 3-10% per annum gains. BTW the card at MS gives you two cards for free, $450 primary, and one secondary, which is usually $175/
$1mm? That’s all? Let me just transfer it from my mmmmmmmm Swiss bank account…
But really, $450 on $1mm is terrible; even in a 1% account that’s $10,000/year in interest. Not that I’d keep that kind of cash in just a 1% account, but it still illustrated how much of a drop in the bucket $450 is.
Its not that you give Morgan Stanley $1 mil to just hold and they will waive the annual fee. Its you let Morgan Stanley manage $1+ mil of your money and they will waive the AMEX Plat annual fee because they make it back in fees for managing your $1+ mil. Depending on how you want your money managed, your advisor helps you get a return usually between 3-10% (it can vary though depending on the assets performance). So on top of Morgan Stanley turning your $1 mil into $1.1 million (before fees), they are also reimbursing you for the $450 for your AMEX Plat.
Please let me know the brokers name that gets you 3 to 10% on your investment. I have been with Morgan Stanley for years and my investment continues to decline.
How is it even possible that your investment continues to decline while markets have been posting record high numbers constantly for the past few years. Even right now we are almost at the highest all markets have ever been. Even with the 2009 crash the Dow is up 59% over the past 10 years.
Fees and more fees
I have a friend that just got the Morgan Stanley AMEX Platinum because he keeps over $1 million with them. He’s been with Morgan Stanley for a while and always had the regular platinum till I told him about the reimbursement if he switched – I don’t the $450 annual fee bothered him, but wealthy people are always down for easy savings. Now that $450 saved will probably be used to buy a nice bottle of wine.
Of course your friend would switch to MS Amex platinum which I assume has the same benefits as his previous regular Amex platinum if you told him he can save $450 without any effort. Anyone would if the effort was nil. My point was that someone who has $1mil in a single financial firm likely has much more overall and generally are thinking big thoughts on how to increase their earning power and make more money rather than scouring threw finance blogs to save few bucks or letting what appears to be an expensive annual fee for majority of people be a deciding factor in getting a credit card or not.
Gleaning info from finance blogs, while I do it too, is just more of an advanced version of sunday coupon clipping.
“My point was that someone who has $1mil in a single financial firm likely has much more overall and generally are thinking big thoughts on how to increase their earning power and make more money rather than scouring threw finance blogs to save few bucks or letting what appears to be an expensive annual fee for majority of people be a deciding factor in getting a credit card or not.”
Its funny you say that, I have a few friends in the $5+ mil group who recently have gotten on board with the whole miles/points game. They are not as active as most people with reading blogs/forums daily and grabbing every credit card opportunity, but they are interested in taking free flights and staying in hotels for free. At the end of the day, not having to spend $6K for a TPAC flight on a vacation is worth the small time/hassle of opening a new credit card, even for people with 7 figures of assets.
Sure, opening new credit cards for bonus. Travel hacking. All for it. However, are your wealthy friends reading finance blogs to find the deals, or someone else such as financial advisors, family, or friends such as yourself informing them of the deals.
In the past I would say they have gotten informed on the deals/hacks from others like friends and advisors. Lately with all these blogs, forums, and even main stream media (Bloomberg article about the CSR, etc), they are now starting get some information on their own, which does show how the industry is evolving. Sure there are millionaire business people who view flying from New York to Hong Kong as a business necessity and are only in Hong Kong because work requires them and could care less about anything related to travel.
There are a lot of wealthy people that aren’t just spending every minute of their day figuring out ways to increase their wealth/working 70 hours per week/constantly on the road. These people have hobbies like golfing, sailing, cooking, coin and wine collecting, etc, they spend time with family and friends, and do many other activities with their time.
My hobby/passion is to travel, I spend a portion of my free time reading/researching travel information from utilizing credit card points to hotel reviews and destination activities to airline forums. When I want to go sailing or try some wine, I hit up my friends who love to do those and they reach out to me when they want to vacation/seize a great travel opportunity.
Agreed, it’s funny because people in that bracket often do the best out of these deals because they are legitimately purchasing first and business class tickets for cash.
In for 20.
Seriously, $1,000,000? If you have that kind of money, worrying about an annual fee isn’t among the issues keeping you up at night.
Also, any investment bank that was even slightly involved/culpable in the 2008 disaster isn’t getting any of my money. They still owe me. 🙂
Absolutely agree with this. If you have over a million in morgan stanley account or any other wall st firms, that means you have multi millions in overall and shouldn’t worry about a $450 annual fee. I doubt most finance blog readers have that kind of spare change.
you’d be surprised