American Express Membership Rewards - How many Centurion cardholders are there in the US?

Does anyone know roughly how many people there are in the US with the Black Card?

Does anyone know roughly how many people there are in the US with the Black Card?

Browsing the sticky at the stop of this forum, one could find this post with some interesting links.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showpost.php?p=7426753&postcount=25 (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showpost.php?p=7426753&postcount=25)

Departures magazine circulation:

December 2006 (page 3) shows 17,875 Personal + 5,630 Business = 23,505 USA Centurion cardholders.

http://www.departures.com/mediakit/downloads/DEP_1206.pdf

June 2007 (page 3) shows 19,523 Personal + 6,752 Business = 26,275 USA Centurion cardholders

http://www.departures.com/mediakit/downloads/DEP_BPA_0607.pdf

December 2007 data is not yet online. Corresponding Platinum cardholder data is also included. Suffice it to say there is no exclusivity with well over 1 million accounts.

This indicates 2,770 (11.7%) additional Centurion accounts created in six months. Put another way, American Express sold over 15 Centurion memberships per calendar day. Ignoring initiation fees, that's $6.925 million in incremental annual fee revenue.

Just a small FYI: Departures goes to Plat members too, so it would be less than the full circulation amount.

EDIT: Spoke too soon -- my mistake. You're right!

I don't think there is much exclusivity with 26k+ Cent holders! That number just shows how good Amex is at product marketing.

Hmm, being able to get that data from Departures is useful. Guess once a year or so, I shouldn't just move it directly from mailbox to recycling bin.

I don't think there is much exclusivity with 26k+ Cent holders!


As a percentage of the U.S. population, it's not bad. :) But I agree, it's not that exclusive.

Susan

One million Plat card holders (counting both business and personal cards) can hardly be described as "exclusive", but it's still a very small fraction of the total number of AmEx cards out there (25-30m in the US).

I first got Plat in 1992 when it was by invitation only (I loved the app, too -- all they wanted was my SSN and signature, I guess because they had enough payment history from me already). If I remember correctly, the invitation letter said that Plat offers were extended to the "top 2%" of AmEx card holders.

So even with all the marketing of the Plat in the past ten years it looks like it still accounts for only 3% of AmEx cardholders. And if you don't include the business card, which didn't exist in 1992, it's about 2.5%.

I find this surprising given the "promotion" of Plat, so if anyone can run the numbers differently for me, I'd be interested.