What happens to airline miles, hotel points and loyalty schemes when you die? (UK)
18 August 2026 · Inherit Vault
Loyalty points feel like money. Legally they're nothing of the sort. Nearly every scheme's terms say the points aren't your property, which means they don't automatically pass to anyone when you die.
It depends on the scheme, and on someone asking
British Airways' Executive Club terms say Avios can't be inherited. In practice BA will usually move a balance to a Household Account member or to close family who send in a death certificate. Virgin Atlantic's Flying Club is much the same. Hilton Honors and Marriott Bonvoy will both transfer a balance to a named person or the estate with the right paperwork. Nectar is blunter: points are non-transferable, and that's that. None of this is a right you can enforce. It's goodwill, and goodwill has to be asked for.
The supermarket ones are usually easiest
Tesco will normally move a Clubcard balance to a partner at the same address, and vouchers stay valid to their printed expiry date. It's a phone call and a copy of the death certificate, not a legal process. Do it early, because a scheme that has been told the account holder died will often close the account first and ask questions later. Raise the transfer in the same call as the notification, not weeks after it.
There's a clock running either way
Most schemes wipe points after a period of inactivity, commonly somewhere between one and three years. Nobody sends a reminder. A balance built up over a decade can vanish while the family is still working through the paperwork on the house, and there's no appeal once it's gone.
Do they count for inheritance tax?
Almost never. If points can't be sold or transferred, they've got no open market value, so they don't belong on the IHT return. No executor is expected to put a price on 40,000 Avios. That cuts both ways, mind: the thing HMRC ignores is exactly the thing nobody bothers to chase.
The real problem isn't the law here, it's that nobody knows the accounts exist. Miles and points live in an email inbox, under a membership number nobody else has ever seen. A short list of which schemes, which email address, which number, is the difference between someone getting a flight out of it and an account quietly closing itself.
Leave your family a map, not a mystery.
Inherit Vault is a digital inheritance vault: every account, policy, and instruction your family will need, encrypted so only you can read it, released to your executor when it genuinely matters.
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