
UBS initiates Liberty Global LiLAC stock with neutral rating
UBS initiates Liberty Global LiLAC stock with neutral rating
it’s all in the curve – Bank Underground
Sofia Carollo and Natalie Burr
While monetary policy sets short-term policy rates, households and firms borrow at varying time horizons. How a policy decision reshapes the whole yield curve therefore matters. We trace the reactions of yields in narrow windows around UK monetary policy announcements across two dimensions: a ‘level’ surprise that shifts the entire curve and a ‘slope’ surprise that changes its steepness. We find that a level surprise affects CPI inflation more than a slope surprise does; this result is difficult to recover from surprises that conflate the two dimensions. So, the policy rate tells only part of the story: two curves considered equivalent from a stance perspective can lead to different inflation outcomes. Policymakers must be attuned to these differing effects.
The whole yield curve matters for monetary policy transmission
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) sets Bank Rate, the overnight policy rate. But that is not a rate households or firms ever really pay (Burr and Willems (2024)). What they face are deposit rates, mortgage rates, or other borrowing costs, and these stretch across different horizons, from overnight loans to mortgages spanning decades.
Measuring the effects of monetary policy therefore means looking at the whole curve, not just one rate, and cleanly separating out the effects on the curve that stem from a given policy announcement from other factors. Changes in Bank Rate anchor the very short end of the yield curve, but a policy decision can ripple across the entire curve. Such effects can be intended by policymakers – via unconventional tools such as quantitative easing and forward guidance (Busetto et al (2022)) or via policymakers’ communication about the outlook and likely path of policy. At the same time, the yield curve is not entirely under the control of monetary policy makers – other factors such as expectations of future rates, the economic outlook, expected future fiscal policy, and risk premia also influence both the level, and steepness of the curve.
Measuring level and slope effects
Rather than tracking isolated shifts at individual maturities on the curve, we separately trace movements to the level and slope of the curve. This is important as movements in long rates are correlated with movements in short rates but reach the economy through different channels. This assessment also matters for better understanding the interaction between conventional and unconventional policy tools on macro-outcomes (Mann (2025)). The level and slope factors capture the primary dimensions along which yields move and have become standard tools for analysing yield curve dynamics (Litterman and Scheinkman (1991)).
Following Odendahl et al (2024), we decompose UK monetary policy into its effects on the ‘level’ and ‘slope’ of the yield curve. We rely on a mix of spot and forward rates to represent the whole curve: 3 month and 1 year spot rates, plus the 1y1y, 2y1y, 4y1y and 9y1y forward rates. A forward rate is agreed today for borrowing over a future window, so 2y1y is the one-year rate expected to apply in two years. Unlike long dated spot rates, which average expected short rates across multiple horizons, forward rates isolate specific points on the curve and therefore provide a cleaner read on how different maturities shape it.
To identify monetary policy surprises, we track yield movements in 30-minute windows around 305 UK monetary policy announcements since operational independence in 1997, based on the database from Braun et al (2025). The high-frequency approach of using narrow windows around announcements gives us confidence that the observed yield movements reflect monetary policy rather than other news.
We then summarise these surprise movements in yields using principal component analysis (PCA), which filters out idiosyncratic volatility and extracts the common movements across maturities. Just two factors explain around 75% of the variation in yields on MPC announcement days. The first resembles a near parallel shift in the curve, which we interpret as a level factor, while the second captures changes in its steepness, which we interpret as a slope factor. Importantly, these patterns emerge from the data rather than being imposed a priori. Note that our factors are empirical approximations of joint yield dynamics that resemble level and slope effects but are not structurally modelled, so the resulting level shock isn’t a completely parallel shift, and the slope shock isn’t a uniform tilt.
Chart 1: Principal components across spot and forward yields (a) (b)

Sources: Authors’ calculations using yield curve data from Bloomberg Finance L.P., Tradeweb and Bank calculations.
(a) First principal component, level factor.
(b) Second principal component, slope factor.
From the PCA loadings, we then construct level and slope surprises for each announcement as weighted sums of yield surprises across maturities. Lined up by date, these form the level and slope surprise series shown below. These surprise series provide empirical measures of the two dimensions through which monetary policy announcements move the yield curve. We use them as proxies for level and slope monetary policy shocks in the macroeconomic analysis that follows.
Chart 2: Monetary policy surprises: level and slope components over time (a) (b)

Sources: Authors’ calculations using yield curve data from Bloomberg Finance L.P., Tradeweb and Bank calculations.
(a) Surprises to the level of the curve.
(b) Surprises to the slope of the curve.
Tracing the macroeconomic effects from ‘level’ and ‘slope’ monetary policy shocks
How do the ‘level’ and ‘slope’ monetary policy shocks affect the UK macroeconomy? To quantify this, we estimate a Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR). Building on the proxy SVAR framework of Arias et al (2021), that allows for multiple external instruments, the proxies enter jointly as two external instruments. Because the PCA factors are orthogonal by construction, the impulse responses represent the marginal effect of each shock independently of the other.
The model is estimated as a single VAR in log-levels on monthly data. The variables include UK nominal spot and forward yields at various horizons (3m, 1y, 1y1y, 4y1y and 9y1y), UK asset prices (£ERI, FTSE All Share, Investment Grade Corporate Bond Spreads) and seasonally adjusted real GDP and CPI, in levels. Our level and slope surprise series serve as external instruments, include in the VAR to proxy the shocks. The VAR includes 12 lags, and the sample period is June 1997 to December 2019.
Level and slope shocks generate different macroeconomic outcomes
We start by asking what happens when gilt yields fall across the whole curve. A negative level shock, normalised to a 25-basis-point decline in the 1y yield, leads to a significant fall in yields across maturities on impact (Chart 3). Further, we observe a decline in credit spreads, rise in equity prices and depreciation of the exchange rate indicate a broad easing in financial conditions, supporting both demand and inflation. Indeed, GDP picks up gradually, with the largest gain after about a year. The consumer price level responds with a delay, rising just under a year after the shock and notably after the pickup in output. A positive, statistically significant price response is not easily obtained in UK data, where small VARs often produce a price puzzle. Our results may point to the value of using the full yield curve to build the shocks: separating level from slope separates two dimensions of curve variation, so the price response to a level shock is less likely to be diluted by slope movements.
Chart 3: Impulse response functions to a 25-basis-point negative level shock

In contrast, a slope shock steepens the curve by easing short‑term rates while tightening further out. A positive slope shock, ie, a 25-basis-point on-impact fall in short‑term yields, boosts GDP while leaving CPI broadly unchanged (Chart 4). While our linear framework implies that a flattening shock would produce symmetric effects in the opposite direction, monetary policy transmission may be asymmetric, with easing and tightening having different macroeconomic effects – as shown by Busetto (2024) and Stenner (2021), among others, and Lloyd and Ostry (2024) for unconventional policy. We find that the easing at the short end provides near‑term stimulus to activity, which more than offsets the modest tightening at longer maturities. The price level, by contrast, appears relatively insensitive to either end of the curve in this case. This is consistent with the middle segment remaining anchored. The slope shock behaves much like a short-end (target) surprise, as in Braun et al (2025), where the shock has a significant effect on output but a weak price puzzle effect. This may further suggest that it is more the level than the slope dimension of the curve associated with the price response, and something that shocks focusing on isolated segments of the curve could blur.
Chart 4: Impulse response functions to a steepening slope shock

Monetary policy implications
Our results highlight that the effects from a policy announcement go beyond the change in a single interest rate alone. We have shown that different types of changes to the yield curve associated with monetary policy shocks have distinct macroeconomic effects, even when they imply a similar change in the average level of yields.
We find that level and slope shocks are not interchangeable: they redistribute changes across maturities that transmit with different strength and timing. It is not that particular maturities ‘matter more’ (a separate question we do not cover in the post). Whether a given move in gilt yields tightens or loosens the economy depends crucially on where along the curve it occurs, and whether that move is broad‑based or concentrated at particular maturities – impacts the strength and timing of monetary transmission to the aggregate economy.
While policymakers cannot exert precise control over the entire yield curve, our results suggest that they should be attentive not just to an average change in yields, but to the configuration of those changes across maturities, when gauging the likely strength and timing of monetary transmission.
Sofia Carollo works in the Bank’s Monetary and Financial Conditions Division and Natalie Burr works in the Bank’s External MPC Unit.
If you want to get in touch, please email us at bankunderground@bankofengland.co.uk or leave a comment below.
Comments will only appear once approved by a moderator, and are only published where a full name is supplied. Bank Underground is a blog for Bank of England staff to share views that challenge – or support – prevailing policy orthodoxies. The views expressed here are those of the authors, and are not necessarily those of the Bank of England, or its policy committees.
Share the post “Monetary policy transmission: it’s all in the curve”
[Rumor] Chase Aeroplan Card To Be Refreshed
It looks like the Chase Aeroplan card is set to be refreshed. Last month reddit user Correct-Condition-50 saw a new benefit that was $100 in Air Canada statement credits ($50, twice annually)
Today reddit user TheLegendOfRabbit noticed that Kayak has a demo link with more details regarding card changes. For example earning rates being cut on grocery stores/dining:
- Earn 3X points at grocery stores and on dining through December 31, 2026. Then, earn 2X points at grocery stores and on dining.
Also says the PYB feature will end 2026, but it always lists that end date and then is usually extended. No guarantees that’s the case this time just what has happened historically.
Donald Trump’s administration just sided with OpenAI in a key ‘fair use’ case. Here’s what it means for music’s fight with Anthropic and Suno.
The US Government has told a court that AI companies do not break copyright law when they train their models on written work without a license.
The Department of Justice set out that position on Tuesday (September 1), in a filing in the copyright lawsuit brought against OpenAI by The New York Times.
It appears to be the first time Washington has intervened in any of the copyright cases now stacked up against AI companies.
Those cases include the lawsuits filed against Anthropic, Suno, and Udio by the world’s largest music companies.
Every one of them turns on “fair use,” the exception in US copyright law that allows copyrighted material to be reused without permission.
The DOJ has now come down on the AI industry’s side of that question – at least, that is, when it comes to copyrighted text.
The DOJ’s filing – a ‘Statement of Interest Of The United States’, which you can read here – is advice rather than a ruling, and Judge Sidney Stein is free to ignore it in the OpenAI case.
The 20-page document was signed by Stanley Woodward, the Associate Attorney General.
It reads: “The United States has a strong interest in this Court rejecting any argument that training LLMs on copyrighted texts violates copyright law.”
“The United States has a strong interest in this Court rejecting any argument that training LLMs on copyrighted texts violates copyright law.”
Statement of Interest Of The United States
The filing rests on Donald Trump‘s own AI policy, citing two of the President‘s executive orders, from January 2025 and June 2026.
It also quotes his National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence, published in March, which states that the “training of AI models on copyrighted material,” in and of itself, “does not violate copyright laws.”
The DOJ takes on the two questions that decide most fair use rulings: (i) how far the new use transforms the original, and (ii) whether it damages the market for it.
On the first, the brief argues that copying text (like the New York Times’) to train a model like ChatGPT is “a use of a different kind or character,” and “extraordinarily transformative.”
On the second, the Justice Department argues that a training copy does not “serve as a substitute for the original,” because training “does not reveal anything to the public at all.”
Large AI companies paying licensing fees to publishers of titles like the NYT “would disproportionately benefit legacy media outlets due to the sheer volume of their written publications,” the US Government adds.
It is not in the public’s interest, the DOJ argues, for the largest tech companies to hold “an oligopoly on LLM training due to licensing entry barriers that function primarily as large subsidies for old mainstream media companies.”
Why this matters for music
To be very clear: the DOJ‘s filing is about words, not songs.
It argues about “copyrighted texts,” “written works,” and “text articles.” Meanwhile, a footnote limits the DOJ‘s reasoning to this case and, specifically, related suits brought by “book authors and publishers.”
Recordings and compositions go completely unmentioned across its 20 pages.
But fair use is fair use. And, obviously, a judge weighing Suno‘s defense may read what the US Government now says the test means.
The DOJ splits the building of an AI model into three stages: (i) acquiring the material, (ii) training the model on it, and (iii) generating outputs.
“Each stage may present distinct questions of copyright law,” the DOJ says – and it defends only the middle one.
In their banner cases against AI companies, the majors and their publishers are attacking all three.
The first stage is how the material was obtained, and it’s an area where the AI industry has already lost ground.
In the precedential book authors’ case against Anthropic, Judge William Alsup ruled in 2025 that downloading books from pirate libraries was not fair use, calling it “straightforward piracy but at massive scale.”
Anthropic settled with those authors for $1.5 billion in September 2025 over the same torrenting.
Two of the four counts in Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music’s new suit against Anthropic, the fifth music copyright case against the Claude developer, concern torrenting.
The DOJ‘s filing says nothing about any of that.
The second stage at question in AI cases is the training itself (i.e. models being fed information/content, and learning from it).
It’s this stage the DOJ defends, and the one place it goes straight at music’s reasoning.
In 2025, book authors who had sued Meta over AI training lost on fair use. But the judge who decided it, Vince Chhabria, raised a theory that could help rightsholders in future cases.
Chhabria suggested that AI outputs carry the “potential to flood the market with competing works” – and that developers should therefore “generally need to pay copyright holders for the right to use their materials”… even for training.
In other words: for Chhabria, what comes out is evidence that what went in should have been licensed.
Lawyers call that market dilution, and it is the argument music has been building on ever since.
In a brief filed on March 30, the RIAA, NMPA, A2IM, SoundExchange, and four other groups asked a court to reject Anthropic‘s fair use defense (in a legal fight with UMG, Concord, and ABKCO) on similar market harm grounds.
However, the DOJ now calls Chhabria‘s reasoning “deeply flawed,” and says he “improperly collapsed LLM training and LLM outputs into a single continuous use.”
Training and outputs are two separate legal questions, the US Government argues, and what a model produces has no bearing on whether training it was lawful.
If a court accepts that, music can no longer point at a flood of AI tracks as proof that training on UMG or Sony recordings was unlawful.
That wall cuts both ways, which brings us to the third stage of the ‘AI wars’: what the models actually puts out.
The DOJ is not defending outputs – it is saying they must be fought over separately.
At the output stage, the US Government concedes, “certain uses may not be transformative if the LLM reconstructs and disseminates an original copyrighted work.”
As MBW reported in July, that is the ground UMG and Sony Music have chosen against Suno and Udio: that AI-generated songs compete directly with the recordings used to train the models that made them.
Music publishers make the same argument about Claude reproducing lyrics on demand. (A fourth claim sits outside fair use altogether: Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell accuse Anthropic of stripping out copyright management information, the ownership data attached to a work.)
The New York Times said on Wednesday (September 2) that the Trump administration “is siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies at the expense of the countless American creators whose work they stole.”
“Both AI and creators can thrive – AI companies simply need to pay fairly for the content that makes their products possible, as copyright law requires,” said Graham James, a spokesperson for the paper.
“The Administration’s proposal to let companies take that content without permission or compensation would undermine the sustainability of the human-created content that a healthy society depends on, and which AI needs to function.”Music Business Worldwide
China demands answers after Chinese man dies in ICE custody, the fifth to die in U.S. custody
The Chinese government is pressing for answers after a Chinese man died hours after being taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a U.S. territory.
Lianyong Wei, 51, died Aug. 23 at a hospital in the Northern Mariana Islands, ICE announced in a news release Tuesday.
Wei was arrested Aug. 21 by the Northern Mariana Islands Department of Public Safety on criminal charges stemming from an alleged assault on a family of five at their home, according to ICE. He was taken into ICE custody the next day pending removal proceedings.
ICE said a guard at the lockup in Saipan found Wei unresponsive during routine morning checks on Aug. 23. He was taken to a hospital emergency room, where he was pronounced dead after “life-sustaining interventions were initiated,” the agency said, noting that the cause of his death is under investigation.
Wei entered the U.S. territory in February 2019 and was authorized to stay for two weeks, according to ICE. U.S. authorities began removal proceedings in July 2026, and Wei’s next hearing had been scheduled for this month.
The Chinese Consulate General in Los Angeles said it had been notified of Wei’s death.
“We have expressed serious concerns to the relevant U.S. authorities over this incident and required a timely and thorough investigation into the cause of Mr. Wei’s death, notification of the findings, measures to prevent any recurrence of similar incidents, and assistance to the family of the deceased in handling the aftermath,” the consulate said in a statement.
Wei is at least the fifth Chinese national who has died in the custody of ICE or the U.S. Border Patrol since March 2025, according to tracking by The Associated Press. Two of the first four deaths have been ruled suicides and the other two were the result of medical complications.
At least 57 ICE detainees have died since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, a death rate that has alarmed public health experts, advocates for immigrants and the Mexican government.
ICE hasn’t said whether Wei received the medical intake screening, which the agency promises to detainees within their first 12 hours in custody. Medical experts say a thorough screening is critical to preventing deaths.
It’s unclear why it took ICE more than a week to acknowledge Wei’s death, which was announced by authorities in the Northern Mariana Islands on Aug. 24. ICE has said it aims to issue a news release on detainee deaths within two business days.
The lockup in Saipan has held an average of 18 ICE detainees on any given day this year, according to ICE data. Roughly 50,000 people live in the Northern Mariana Islands.
“Following this incident, the Department is reviewing relevant procedures and will implement any necessary corrective actions to strengthen prevention and response measures,” Northern Mariana Islands corrections commissioner Anthony Torres said in a statement.
Ravi Kiran Reddy About ABM Course | Agriculture Business Management Jobs |Midas Educational Services
Watch►Ravi Kiran Reddy About ABM Course | Agriculture Business Management Jobs |Midas Educational Services
#sumantvtelugu #midaseducationalservices #abm
Follow us:
source
Texas State Doubles Free Tuition Income Cap To $100,000 For 2027 Freshmen
Texas State University is doubling the income limits on its free tuition program. Starting with the Fall 2027 entering class, first-time freshmen who graduate in the top 25% of their high school class and have a family adjusted gross income of $100,000 or less will qualify for free tuition and mandatory fees under the expanded Bobcat Promise.
That makes Texas State a part of a growing list of colleges that have made tuition free for qualifying families.
The university expects the expansion to benefit roughly 3,400 incoming freshmen. Students from families earning $50,000 or less remain eligible regardless of class rank, keeping the program’s original focus on Texas students with the greatest financial need.
Would you like to save this?
Why It Matters
Tuition prices keep climbing, and families are feeling it. Families spent an average of $34,019 on college last year, up 10%, according to Sallie Mae.
A guaranteed four years of free tuition and fees at a public university gives middle-income Texas families a real number to plan around instead of guessing at what college really costs after financial aid.
The class rank requirement is a differentiator versus many of the elite colleges that are doing similar programs. Unlike income-only programs, Texas State is pairing the higher $100,000 tier with a top 25% academic threshold, a structure that rewards high-performing students who might otherwise take on student loan debt or skip a four-year school.
The Details
The program covers full tuition and mandatory fees for up to four years (eight consecutive semesters). To qualify, students must:
- Be a Texas resident who graduated from a Texas high school
- Be admitted to Texas State as a first-time freshman
- Meet the income tier requirements ($100,000 or less with top 25% class rank, or $50,000 or less with no rank requirement)
- File the FAFSA and demonstrate financial need by March 15 prior to enrollment
- Enroll full time and complete at least 15 credit hours each fall and spring semester at the San Marcos or Round Rock campus
There are also some limitations on student athletes per the NCAA rules.
How This Connects
Free tuition thresholds have been rising fast across higher education. Harvard went tuition-free for families under $200,000, UChicago pushed its threshold to $250,000, and in Texas, Rice expanded free tuition to families earning up to $200,000.
Texas State’s $100,000 cap sits below those elite privates, but the difference is scale: with enrollment topping 44,000 students in Fall 2025, it’s the kind of broad-access public university where a promise program reaches thousands of students per class rather than hundreds.
It also fits a broader state push on affordability, including Texas’ move toward three-year bachelor’s degrees.
What’s Next
The first eligible students are current high school seniors, who will apply during the 2026-27 admissions cycle for enrollment next fall. Families also need to meet Texas’ March 15 FAFSA deadline, so families should file as soon as the FAFSA opens.
Watch whether other large Texas schools respond with their own expanded promise programs ahead of Fall 2027.
Editor: Colin Graves
The post Texas State Doubles Free Tuition Income Cap To $100,000 For 2027 Freshmen appeared first on The College Investor.
Mortgage Rates Are at New 2026 Highs, But There’s a But
You’ve probably heard that mortgage rates hit a new 2026 high.
That’s true. The 30-year fixed climbed to 6.89%, per the latest daily rate update from Mortgage News Daily.
It is indeed the highest point of 2026, and the highest point in over 52 weeks as well.
The last time the 30-year fixed was this high was all the way back in June of 2025.
But it’s not really as bad as it seems because the recent increases have been super incremental.
New 2026 High for the 30-Year Fixed
Allow me to find a silver lining while everyone else is panicking that mortgage rates are at 2026 highs.
I get it. They’re “high” right now. The highest they’ve been in over a year in fact.
The 30-year fixed is pushing toward 7% again, something it hasn’t done since last May.
That’s clearly not great news, and it means another year will go by with home sales crawling around 30-year lows.
It means mortgage refinance business continues to be abysmal, and it means banks and mortgage lenders are struggling mightily.
Definitely not a lot to cheer about right now.
Housing affordability was already bad when rates were closer to 6%, and now it’s even worse.
But before we get in a tizzy, let’s zoom out and look at this all in context.
The 30-year fixed did hit a new high, but just barely. We’re talking a few basis points here and there.
The new high achieved yesterday was literally two basis points higher than the prior high.
So MND said the daily average was 6.89%, up from 6.87%. That wouldn’t even register for most mortgage lenders.
Their rate sheet wouldn’t even change. The pricing you saw yesterday would likely be the same today.
Before this latest run up, the 30-year fixed hit a 2026 high of 6.85% back in late July.
So our new highs have moved up a whopping four basis points. From 6.85% to 6.89% over the span of a month.
Are Mortgage Rates Near a Ceiling?
Now my silver lining might not mean a whole lot if mortgage rates keep ascending.
But they don’t appear to be on track to do that. If you look at the new highs, as noted, they’re a few bps higher.
This isn’t 2022-2023, when the 30-year fixed climbed from 3% to 8% in the span of less than 12 months.
This is mortgage rates moving from the low 6s to the high 6s (after being in the 7s).
For perspective, that’s a percentage increase of roughly 15% versus the 167% increase from 3% to 8%.
This is one of the “benefits” of a higher starting point for mortgage rates.
If we’re already at 6%, going to 7% isn’t so bad.
When we were at 3%, going to even 4% or 5% was bad enough. It was a huge jump.
Now it’s just an incremental rise.
Mortgage Rates Stuck in a Range
It’s also worth noting that we’ve been in this range for years now. The 30-year fixed has bounced around these levels for literally four years.
This isn’t an acute moment. It’s the latest move higher for rates as they continue to ebb and flow within this range.
Sometimes they’re in the 7s, sometimes they dip toward the low 6s. Right now they’re pushing up again, but might not even hit a 7-handle again.
Sure, the trend isn’t our friend right now. It’s been rough since the war got going in early March.
But if we zoom out, mortgage rates aren’t surging out of control. They’re just back toward the top of their recent range.
Importantly, that means they could also be close to topping out again and due for some much-needed relief.
Read on: Use my mortgage rate calculator to compare rates that are an eighth apart.
BoA Unlimited Cash Rewards Credit Card Review (2026.9 Update: $250 Offer + Additional $150 Bonus From Rakuten!)
[2026.9 Update] Besides the $250 offer provided by BoA itself, third party website Rakuten offers an additional $150 cashback! Note that if you choose to earn MR on Rakuten you may see $0 additional cashback, you need to choose to earn cashback on Rakuten. We no longer track the additional cashback from Rakuten (unless there’s a best ever offer) because it changes too frequently.
[2026.8 Update] The new offer is $250.
[2025.6 Update] The new offer is $200 plus unlimited 2% cashback for the first year. This is 0.5% more cashback in addition to the existing 1.5% cashback rate. Therefore, if you are a Platinum Honors member with +75% bonus, you will earn 1.5%*(1+75%)+0.5%=3.125% cashback rate! This is the best ever offer on this card. This is a fantastic offer if you have huge spending.
Application Link
Benefits
- $250 offer: earn $250 cashback after spending $1,000 in first 3 months.
- Earn 1.5% cashback on all purchases.
- BoA Preferred Rewards program: If you have checking/savings/brokerage account in BoA or Merrill Edge, you can earn additional points based on the amount of asset. Earn additional 25% rewards if you are in Gold tier ($20k or more in balance); 50% if Platinum tier ($50k or more in balance); 75% if Platinum Honors tier ($100k or more in balance).
- No annual fee.
Disadvantages
- It has a foreign transaction fee, so it’s not a good choice outside the US.
Recommended Application Time
- You can get it even without SSN and with no credit history at all! We recommend you go to the branch in this situation.
- [New] 2/3/4 Rule: BoA will only approve you for at most: 2 cards per rolling 2 months; 3 cards per rolling 12 months; and 4 cards per rolling 24 months. Because their IT system hasn’t been fully updated yet, you may not get declined because of this rule. Instead, you may get approved at first, and then the account will be closed because of “approved in error”.
- [New] 24 month churn rule: This card will not be available to you if you currently have or have had the card in the preceding 24 month period.
Summary
The sign-up bonus is decent for a no annual fee card. If you have $100k+ balance in BoA or Merrill Edge, you can earn 1.5%*(1+75%)=2.625% in return! This card is quite similar to BoA Travel Rewards, the main differences are: (1) this card is a cashback card, so you don’t need to worry about the hassle of redeeming points; (2) this card has foreign transaction fee, so you shouldn’t use it outside of the US.
Related Credit Cards
After Applying
- Click here to check BoA application status.
- BoA reconsideration backdoor number: 800-732-9194. It seems that the number is changing. Please inform us at once if it fails. The representatives here can get in touch with decision-makers directly.
Historical Offers Chart
Application Link
If you like this post, don’t forget to give it a 5 star rating!
How Curveball Questions Can Surface the Insight You’re Looking For
We’re all taught to ask tough questions. Interviewers are coached to use open-ended prompts to get beyond rehearsed answers. Managers press for specifics when employees speak in generalities. Journalists and negotiators follow up when someone evades the point. The aim is the same: to uncover information the other person may be reluctant to reveal.
