lincoln841

Has anyone had any success getting American Express to convert their Business Centurion to a Personal Centurion card? If so, how?

Assuming not, how do people manage to keep the Centurion if they leave the business? I'm leaving the business I started as it got acquired, but want to keep the Centurion card we have with it!

nyc2cal

Better approach would be to see if they would let you transfer the business to an LLC you create. The Business card has the 50% points back on airline, plus all the benefits of the Personal card (except the Uber credit). You get more for the same annual fee.

98pct

My personal experience was in 2015. At the time I was a 50% owner of a business. My 50% partner was the primary on the Amex Bus Centurion. I purchased his half of the business. In unwinding everything, including moving personal guarantee on amex accounts from him to me , he was given the opportunity to move the BCent account to personal. he decided he didn't want to pay the annual fee.

Since we had invested and owned the asset jointly (ie the initiation fee), we were able to move the account over to me. I have definitely considered moving this to a personal Cent. I am pretty comfortable that they would do it, although I haven't tried.

Generally speaking I've found that many people working at Amex don't know, or aren't allowed to talk with Cent card holders. Either start with your Relationship manager, or Cent customer support, and push until you get your desired outcome. My experience is being a Cent cardholder in first place is an advantage to get them to do what you want.

Good Lucks and let us know how it turns out.







Tim

Often1

1. Call.
2. How have you handled the initiation fee in the business transaction? If the new owner wants it and it is part of the business assets which you have sold, presumably you will need to pay a new fee.

tangfish

Why not just do nothing and keep the card as is? There’s not even a reporting mechanism to my knowledge that informs Amex that the business was sold. As long as you continue to pay your bill and AF, I don’t see why anything would change. Yes your business tax ID was used during the application process, but I believe you are also the personal guarantor. How often has your EIN ever even come up since the application?

mia

I think you want American Express to know that you are no longer affiliated with a business that has been sold. See HERE for an example in which the new owners file bankruptcy, and American Express closed the former owner's accounts.

It may be possible to keep the Business Centurion account and change the business name.

Often1

This.

Not only is the bankruptcy issue a matter of concern, but it almost certainly violates the terms of any routine business sale and there will likely be a requirement that OP notify Amex.

Presuming that OP has an attorney to handle the sale, this is the kind of issue which I would put on the punch list to ask about before failing to make a disclosure.

bubu-SNA

I inquired years ago about converting my business centurion to a personal centurion and was told absolutely with a large caveat; I would have to pay the initiation fee on the personal card. With the initiation requirement I got the feeling that my business centurion would have stayed in place.

Needless to say I declined. From my perspective the business centurion 50% back on points to airfare is huge, as is the ability to deduct the annual fee as a business expense for taxation.

Anish Gupta

I have a question regarding the personal Cent vs the Biz Cent

Does the Personal Cent also earn 1.5X points on all transactions above 5000 US$ and if I recall the points back with personal Cent is 20% instead of 50% as in Biz Cent?

Any clear advantages of the Personal?

jgoodm

Does anyone have an answer on this? I have a personal card, never heard that charges of $5,000 earn 1.5 points so I have been putting those on my amex business. Same with the rebate on points for airfare. Now I am wondering if I should be going the other way, ask for my personal card to be moved to my LLC?

Thanks.

superstar

No, there are no bonuses or incentives for points with the Centurion Card. It’s all 1=1. If you want bonuses and/or multipliers, it’s better to have the Plat or Gold.

jgoodm

Just spoke to Centurion. Confirmed 1.5x points for charges over $5,000 and 50% rebate on pay with points for airfare but that is for business Centurion only. Personal card does not have 1.5x points for charges over $5,000 and the rebate on pay with points is only 20% (which is why I have always used by business plat for that at 35%). I asked what the other differences are if I were to try to convert my card from personal to business and they said they needed to do more detailed research and get back to me. I assume they thought I was making the request and they want to know if thats possible to even do before answering but its still not clear to me if there is anything lost by switching from the personal to the business. If not, it seems like only net gain on benefits and worth doing... Anyone have any specific info on differences between the cards? Thanks.

tangfish

There are other differences between the two. For many years they were nearly identical, then for a few years they started differentiating them and making the business card more, well, business-y (like gogo Wifi). Then in the more recent revamp they started to become more similar again. I do agree that the 1.5X earning and 50% points refund make the business centurion actually a decent value proposition for spending over $5,000 compared to the personal. The other major advantage to the 35% of the platinum is that the 50% applies to any airline, not just a selected one (I think the latter is how the plat works but correct me if I’m wrong).

As someone who did the conversion many years ago in easier times, and at a later time wanted to convert back, I will say that as of a couple years after the Great Recession citing stricter regulations related to money laundering and such, amex require you to qualify all over again, supposedly including paying the initiation fee again; they would not let me convert between the two like I initially did.

YMMV and please report back and let us know if you have any luck.

toyssamurai

As mentioned by a member earlier, the business version has certain valuable benefits that you might want to keep it. With that in mind, I think I have a solution for you.

First thing first, I don't have a luxury to have a Centurion card, so I cannot guarantee that my method will work. However, I once applied for a second Business Platinum for another company that I own (I own several), but I left the autofill on and somehow the wrong company's EIN was put into the application. After a chat with Amex's support, I was told that there's a separate department that could handle that and I was given a number to call. Once I called and explained my situation, Amex changed the EIN that associated to the second Business Platinum for me. So, you can just try asking Amex to change the EIN associated to your company to your own SS# and tell them that you are changing the company to a Sole Proprietorship. Once the EIN is changed, you can change the payment account to your own bank account and your Business Centurion would essentially be your Personal one. No conversion is needed and the only thing need to be changed is the EIN.

bubu-SNA

The only advantage I can think of with the Personal Centurion vs Biz is potentially richer gifts/promos but its a YMMV big time. The gifts are relationship management related either way and the promos (wow offers, gift cards) are demographically & geo targeted (NYC based Centurions appear to, at least anecdotally, get more merchant gift cards promos). Otherwise the centurion 50% back on points for airfare is extremely generous.

Frankly, unless you are making a big ticket purchase and want the very generous extended warranty benefits (think high end electronics, etc) there is absolutely no reason to charge anything on the centurion products. Staying in the AMEX MR ecosystem, a no AF blue biz card earns 2x on all purchases on the first $50K. The gold & plat have generous category bonuses and other banks are just as generous with bonus category bank currency cards and cash back/point cards. 1.5mr for $5K+ charges seems miserly by comparison.

There is simply no reason outside of the warranty extension benefits & loss protections to charge anything on a centurion card if you care at all about getting rewarded for your spending. As far as holding onto the card in light of the new $5,000 AF, that’s a whole other rathole.

P.S. AMEX can choke on their forced equinox membership! Wildly inappropriate to position it as one of the “core value” prop on a business card.