In March some Chase customers received a survey asking them about a product Chase was considering called ‘Chase Reserve Banking or Chase Sapphire Banking‘. According to our sources this will be rolled out on August 18th, 2018 and will be called Sapphire Banking. We don’t know the exact specifics of what this will be, based on the previous survey you’d expect:
- 50,000 points signup bonus (Ultimate Rewards, presumably) when depositing $75k for 90 days
- 10,000 points annual bonus when holding a checking account and credit card
- 75,000 points bonus + $500 back when taking out a Chase mortgage
- .50% discount on some home equity and car loans
- 500 free trades
- No ATM fees
- No foreign exchange fees
- Various other benefits and perks
The cost to be part of this Chase relationship? Two options:
- Either hold $75,000 with Chase
- Or pay $25 per month
Obviously Chase may have made changes to the program since the survey was sent out but I’m 85% confident that Sapphire Banking will be rolled out on August 18th (or around that date). Chase is eager to convert Chase Sapphire Reserve customers and high other value individuals into other more profitable products to help recoup the extremely high customer acquisition costs involved with these customers.
If you put $75,000 into a 2% APY account for 90 days you’d earn ~$370 so there is a real opportunity cost involved in having these funds with Chase (especially when they are going to offer you an APY near 0%), but for some it will make sense to get the sign up bonus (60,000 points in most cases). Will/would you sign up for this new product? It will also be interesting to see how this affects Chase’s Private Client program as well.
