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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

> The cynical part of me wonders if they timed this change to coincide with the SVB debacle in the hopes that the negative PR would be drowned out.

Being in the news for any reason is the last thing a bank wants right now. With startups and the public so much on edge, a simple "omg look at this, Brex is in trouble" tweet can be enough to cause them serious harm.

My guess is the exact opposite – the announcement was pre-planned and they went ahead with it, but some middle manager is going to be getting an earful for not delaying it until the sector is out of the woods.

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There's a third possibility: "get our rewards terms stable and sustainable before we have a massive influx in new accounts so we don't shock the new accounts by clawing things back any time soon."

I have a feeling Brex was quite prepared for this whole thing to play out. With the degree of polish on https://www.brex.com/svb-emergency-line, and the ability to double in a single weekend the number of banks they spread deposits into... whether it was simply because their own analysts saw this happening at some point and had a proactive play-by-play of what to do, or something more coordinated with the VCs advising their companies to move their funds to Brex, is something that I'm sure will be of interest to many in the industry.

Would not be surprising if Brex had insider information from connections/advisors who were executives at SVB.

I thought that I'd heard that Brex had ties to Peter Thiel.

there was no announcement it was unannounced

generally you do not devalue a program without at least a few weeks or months of notice.

very anti customer and not surprised if it leaves bad taste for existing customers. that alone leads me to think it was an immediate reaction to a significant inflow of deposits and new business. these rewards programs are extremely expensive to run.

Points don’t usually get devalued from the credit card to the transfer partners. But most airlines and hotels use “dynamic pricing” and they devalue points all the time. So it’s the same thing

Brex isn't a bank. They partner with a dozen or so banks including JPMorgan (https://www.brex.com/legal/brex-cash-partner-banks).

And, it's clear keeping out of the news was not their strategy this weekend bc the CEO has voluntarily been making public statements in a successful attempt to drive account signups.

Tweeting "we will help startups affected by SVB" is very different from announcing major policy changes in your own operations.

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