We're dealing with a lot of changes in our card portfolio, purchasing BINs, restructuring a lot, rolling out EMV, etc. and it's given us some good opportunities, but of course, some challenges too.

To get to the point, we can now turn an existing card into a different kind of card, while preserving the tradeline, where before we had to close the card and open a new one. The people running this project are thinking the cardholder still needs to reapply for the new card product though.

My question, if the terms of the card are identical in every way except for the product's name, do they really have to do this? All disclosures are the same, so it seems to me like an unnecessary step. We do periodic reviews, and underwrite existing cards and all of that, so this seems like they might (for once) be over-complicating things.

Obviously if they were switching products to something with a different rate, rewards, etc., we would have a different story, but in this case, I'm not sure. Before I tell anyone my opinion on this though, I'd like to get other thoughts or experiences on things like this.