Home ยท How we test
The rule
No number is published without a first-party source and the date it was checked. Not a rule of thumb, a hard gate. A figure without a date is a guess with a decimal point on it, because rates and fees change constantly.
What counts as a source
First party. The provider's own published schedule, disclosure document, help documentation or regulatory filing. This is the only category we treat as sufficient on its own.
Third-party editorial. Reputable review sites and financial press. Useful for finding what to check. Never sufficient on its own. We learned that the hard way, and the incident is on the corrections page.
Third-party affiliate. Sites that earn commission on the product they are describing. Treated as a lead only, never quoted.
The process for a fee page
- Find the provider's own pricing or disclosure page and read the whole thing, including the tiers and the footnotes.
- Record each figure with the exact source and the date.
- Where a figure is tiered or conditional, say so on the page. A single headline rate that actually depends on your balance is not a fact, it is a simplification.
- Where we cannot confirm something first-party, either omit it or label it clearly as unconfirmed.
- Publish the date on the page so a reader can judge how stale it is.
What we deliberately leave out
Figures that appear in only one source and cannot be confirmed elsewhere. There is a real example: a margin rate difference on one broker's cheaper plan appeared in a single write-up and nowhere in the provider's own material, so the page says the rate is higher without attaching a number to it.
Vaguer is better than wrong. A reader can act on "higher, check your own account". Nobody can act safely on a precise number that is not true.
Re-checking
Cash rates, margin rates and promotional pricing move quickly, and pages carrying them are re-verified quarterly. Anything with a check date more than three months old should be treated as indicative until it is refreshed.
When we get it wrong
It goes on the corrections page with the date, what was wrong, and what the source actually said. Pages get fixed, and the record of the fix stays up.
What this method cannot do
It confirms what a provider publishes. It does not confirm that the published schedule matches what lands in your account, which varies by entity, country, account type and balance tier. The only authoritative figure for your situation is the one showing in your own account, and every page here says so.