This evening, I received an e-mail from Asia Miles informing me of a points conversion promotion that it is offering starting today (4 Jan 2018) until 28 February 2018.
Clicking on “Register Now” brings me to this landing page which has super bad colour co-ordination and made my eyes hurt so badly while reading through the Terms and Conditions (as if Singapore’s myopic figures aren’t bad enough) :
What is interesting is that this promotion is specifically targeted at residents of Singapore and Taiwan. Your registered address in your Asia Miles account must reflect Singapore (or Taiwan in case any of our readers are living in Taiwan) in order to take part in this promotion. Presumably, Singapore and Taiwan is Cathay’s main target consumer group within Asia (besides China of course).
Here’s the details of the promotion as per the e-mailer:
Transferring miles to Asia Miles nets you 168 miles per card issuer you transfer from
As we in Singapore do not have a Cathay co-brand card (hint hint), we only have the option to do a points transfer from credit card partners. Combing through their Terms and Conditions, their definition of Finance Partners seem to be that of all the banks which offers credit cards whose points are convertible to Asia Miles. Meaning for us here in Singapore, that would be points obtained from spending with the following card issuers :
- American Express (Membership Reward Points)
- Citibank (Citi Miles & Citi Thankyou Points)
- DBS (DBS Points)
- HSBC (Rewards Points)
- Maybank (TREATS Points)
- Standard Chartered (360 Rewards)
- UOB (UNI$)
You earn 168 miles for every unique finance partner you transfer points to Asiamiles from. That’s to say, if I transfer UNI$ and DBS Points to Asiamiles, I’ll get 2x 168 bonus miles. The maximum bonus is 840 miles, meaning a maximum of you will only earn this bonus for a transferring from a maximum of 5 different credit card partners. If i were you however, I wouldn’t want to be in the situation where I have points split up with 5 different banks.
Earn a 500-16,800 mile bonus on transferred miles
“Eligible miles” transferred during this period earn a tiered bonus. This applies to pretty much all your miles, except the following:
The following miles earned during the Promotion Period are not considered as Eligible Miles:
c. Miles earned via welcome offers and promotions, including points conversion promotions.
d. Miles earned from other banking products within the Finance category.
Meaning that if the banks in Singapore are running concurrent mileage conversion bonuses (like those previously offered by Maybank and HSBC), the miles transferred during such a promotion would not count towards the “Eligible Miles” criteria. That said, there isn’t any being offered at the moment so this isn’t a concern.
Personally, I feel the first portion of clause “c” applies only to Cathay’s co-brand cards as I don’t think Asia Miles can knock on Citibank’s door and ask for each member who earned miles from the sign up bonus: “Hey, did he convert miles from the 42,000 Bonus Miles promotion you’re running?”
The miles transferred during the promotional period are accumulated and totaled at the end of the promotion. Depending on how many you transfer, there are three possible bonus tiers:
The three Bonus Miles tier levels are mutually exclusive and each member is only entitled to Bonus Miles in one tier.
What this means is that within 10-12 weeks from the end of the promotional period (it states 14 April 2018 is the last date points must be deposited into Asia Miles) you will only receive one of the following :
- 500 Bonus Asia Miles (AM) for a total accumulated transfer of between 20,000 – 99,999 AM
- 5000 Bonus AM for a transfer of between 100,000-199,999 AM
- 16,800 Bonus AM for a transfer of between 200,000 AM
and not get 500 + 5,000 + 16,800 bonus AM for each transfer tier you hit.
If you transfer exactly 200,000 AM into your account, this would lead to an effective conversion bonus of 8.4%! Nothing much to shout about really as the banks here offered better bonuses when they ran their individual promotions. The conversion bonus rate is lower if you only managed to hit the first two tiers (i.e 20K and 100K tiers) or transfer miles within the threshold of each tier. See below for the comparison table.
| Miles Converted (Accumulated) | Bonus Miles Awarded | Conversion Bonus |
| 20,000 | 500 | 2.50000% |
| 50,000 | 500 | 1.00000% |
| 99,999 | 500 | 0.50001% |
| 100,000 | 5000 | 5.00000% |
| 150,000 | 5000 | 3.33333% |
| 199,999 | 5000 | 2.50001% |
| 200,000 | 16800 | 8.40000% |
It isn’t that much of a bonus but hey, extra miles is still a bonus. Also, remember that Asia Miles can sometimes get you better value than redeeming KrisFlyer miles on certain routes.
Should you convert your Asia Miles then?
If you have upcoming redemption plans in mind and did not take advantage of the conversion promotions offered by Maybank and HSBC, then go ahead! However, I wouldn’t recommend transferring points just to get up to 8.4% bonus miles (assuming you transfer 200,000 AM). Note that Asia Miles are valid for a period of three (3) years from the date miles are credited to your account.
So, anyone converting their AM?
SO to get 168 extra miles, i need to conver from DBS/UOB or any bank which normally they enquire minimum 10000 miles ? am right ?
yup, per transfer partner. i mean i wouldn’t consider the 168 mile bonus to be a real incentive.
The bonus for miles transferred from various partners seems like a joke. Sure, 840 bonus miles, but at what cost? Some of the programs charge you to convert their points in the first place, so there’s this obvious hidden cost.
Those are probably geared for credit cards that credit directly to AM, like our Amex KF cards that credit directly to KF. For transfer, the bonus that make sense would be the tier bonus