Editorial policy

This policy sets out how we source, check, publish and correct what appears on this site. It applies to every piece of coverage, every guide and every rating, and it is written to be held against us rather than to reassure.

Sourcing standards

Primary sources come first: a regulator's own register, an auditor's report, a protocol's published contracts and documentation, a company's own legal terms, or a public dataset anyone can query. A marketing page is not a primary source for a claim about a company's regulatory standing, reserves or fees. Where we rely on secondary reporting, we say so and link it. Where a claim cannot be traced to a source a reader can open, we do not publish it as fact.

Fact-checking before publication

Every factual claim in a rating is tied to a specific indicator with a source and the date it was checked. Guides are checked against primary documentation before publication and re-checked when the underlying protocol or regulation changes. Numbers that change with the market are excluded from evergreen pages by policy, because a figure that is right on the day of writing and wrong three months later is worse than no figure.

What we will not do

We do not publish price predictions, we do not present speculation as analysis, and we do not describe an asset as a good investment. We do not accept payment to cover a project, to change a finding or to remove one. We do not publish sponsored content that is designed to be mistaken for editorial. Where an arrangement exists, it is labelled where a reader will see it.

Disclosure of interests

An analyst with a position in, or a relationship with, a provider does not assess it. Where the desk holds a position relevant to a piece of coverage, it is disclosed in that piece. Affiliate arrangements are disclosed on the pages where affiliate links appear, and they carry no weight in ranking order or scoring.

Use of AI tools

Research assistance, data processing and drafting support may involve AI tools. Every published claim is verified against a primary source by a person before publication, and the named author is responsible for the piece regardless of what assisted in producing it. We do not publish unreviewed machine-generated text, and an AI tool is never the source for a factual claim.

Corrections

When we are wrong we correct the page and say what changed. Substantive corrections carry a dated note on the article rather than being edited silently. For ratings, any score movement of 0.3 or more requires a dated entry naming the indicators that changed and the evidence behind them, published on the review itself. Providers may dispute an indicator by supplying evidence; we re-verify, correct where we were wrong, and record it. A dispute never pauses a published score.

Author accountability

Every article carries a named author with a profile page describing their beat and background. Ratings carry the analyst who verified them and the verification date. Anonymous bylines are not used for editorial content.