A few years ago, Ambank had one of the most generous lounge access benefits in the banking industry. While most banks have already started to adopt condition-based access for its tie-up with lounges, Ambank remained steadfast and continued to offered unlimited lounge access to its top-tier cardholders. Of course, with a shift in market dynamics and a significant travel revenge boom post-Covid-19, Ambank has now chosen to follow industry standards and adopted access conditions depending on your Assets Under Management (AUM) for its SIGNATURE Priority Banking customers. For other credit card holders, you are entitled to visit lounges up to a certain amount of times per year, with a spend condition attached to each lounge visit.
I previously wrote in my review of the CIMB Travel Platinum Credit Card that Ambank has a sensible approach to lounge access, giving the cardholder a window of 30 days before and after each lounge visit to achieve the spend criteria.
Now, Ambank has officially revised its spend condition for lounge access. If you are an Ambank SIGNATURE Priority Banking cardholder, and you have AUM below RM200,000, your spend condition increases to RM1,000, a whopping 100% increase from the RM500 condition before this. However, on a positive note, you now have an additional lounge access token, 6X per calendar year compared to 5X before the changes.
Ambank's non-SIGNATURE Priority Banking credit cards also follow suit, whereby you'll need to have a spend criteria of RM1,000 for each lounge access token used.
Supplementary Cardholders
If you're a supplementary cardholder of Ambank credit cards, you'll know that Ambank used to have generous lounge access policies for its supplementary cardholders, and most of the time, the conditions are attached to spend-related conditions and not number of access. However, with the latest revision, take note that supplementary cardholders no longer have lounge access if the principal cardholder has AUM below RM200,000.
My Thoughts
In a shift aligning with the post-Covid-19 travel resurgence and prevailing market dynamics, Ambank has updated its lounge access policies. Historically known for its generous, unlimited lounge access for top-tier cardholders, Ambank has now introduced spend-based access conditions. For SIGNATURE Priority Banking customers with Assets Under Management (AUM) below RM200,000, the spend requirement has doubled to RM1,000 from the previous RM500. Yet, there's a silver lining: these cardholders now receive an additional lounge access token, bringing the total to 6X annually, up from the previous 5X. However, supplementary cardholders are left disappointed with the recent changes, and at this stage, I would highly recommend taking a look at other cards with supplementary lounge access instead.
This change, in fact, addresses the recent issue of lounge overcapacity and assures that dedicated travelers, likely to meet the spend conditions while traveling overseas, still get their lounge benefits. Non-SIGNATURE cardholders will similarly need to meet the RM1,000 spend criteria per lounge token. In the bigger picture, this evolution is a strategic and thoughtful move by Ambank, resonating positively with genuine frequent travelers. Last but not least, don't forget that Ambank has one of the widest network of lounges available to its cardholders in the banking industry, trailing behind CIMB, UOB and Maybank The Platinum Card. You can access the full list of eligible lounges here.
