Editorial policy

This page sets out how we produce our coverage: who writes it, who checks it, what we treat as a valid source, how we handle mistakes, and where the money comes from. Our scoring framework, meaning how we arrive at a platform’s rank and score, is a separate document: see our methodology.

Who writes and who checks

Every guide and platform review carries a named writer and, where a second reader has signed it off, a named reviewer. Both names link to that person’s profile, which lists their background, areas of focus and everything else they have published here. Writer and reviewer are never the same person.

Editorial roles are split by subject so that the person checking a piece knows the material: regulation and compliance, real-estate and SME underwriting, quantitative analysis, tax across jurisdictions, and localisation. The full team is on our team page.

What counts as a source

We ask editors to work from primary sources wherever one exists:

• Regulator registers and filings. Licence entries, enforcement notices, warning lists and supervisory reports from ESMA and national authorities.
• Audited financial statements and annual reports published by the platforms themselves.
• Platform disclosures, clearly labelled as self-reported when that is what they are.
• Court and insolvency records where a platform or borrower is in proceedings.
• Independent investigative journalism, weighed as evidence rather than repeated as fact.

Secondary sources, meaning industry blogs, aggregator summaries and press releases, are used only when nothing better exists, and are named as such. A figure that cannot be traced to a source we can link to does not go on the page. Where a widely repeated number fails that test, we say so in the text rather than quietly repeating it.

Every external source an article relies on is listed at the foot of that article, and the same list is published in machine-readable form for search engines.

Independence from commercial relationships

CrowdIndex earns money from affiliate partnerships with some of the platforms we cover. Two rules govern that:

1. Commercial relationships do not change a score or a rank. Platforms we earn nothing from appear above platforms we do earn from, and platforms we partner with are criticised in the same terms as any other.
2. Every commercial link is labelled at the point of use and on our affiliate disclosure page.

We do not accept payment for a review, for a place in a ranking, or for the removal of criticism. We do not send drafts to platforms for approval before publication.

Accuracy, updates and corrections

Review cadence. Every platform review is re-checked against current evidence at least once per quarter. The date shown on each page reflects the most recent check.

Two dates, both real. Pages show when they were first published and, separately, when they were last substantively updated. We update pages in place rather than republishing them at new addresses, so a page’s history stays intact.

Corrections. If we get something wrong, we fix it and say so in the page rather than editing silently. Material corrections are noted with the date. If you believe something here is inaccurate, write to [email protected] with the page and the evidence; we respond to every correction request.

Facts that expire. Interest rates, bonus terms, licence statuses and default figures change. Where a figure is time-sensitive we date it in the text so a reader can judge how stale it is.

How our content is produced

Our drafts are produced with the help of large language models, then checked, corrected and signed off by the named editors before publication. We think it is more useful to tell you that plainly than to claim a purity we do not practise. What we do commit to is the part that actually protects a reader: every factual claim is traced to a source we link to, every number is checked against that source, and no page is published without a named human sign-off.

Machine translation is used to produce our non-English editions from the English originals. Numbers, source links and platform names are held constant across languages; only the prose is translated. Translations are reviewed by our localisation editor over time, and any translation that has not yet had that pass is still held to the same factual standard as the original, because the facts are not re-derived during translation.

What we do not do

• We do not give personalised investment advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything, and we do not know your circumstances.
• We are not regulated as an investment adviser in any jurisdiction, and we do not hold client funds.
• We do not publish content supplied by platforms under our own bylines.
• We do not remove or soften criticism in exchange for commercial terms.

Risk

P2P and crowdlending investments put your capital at risk. Returns are not guaranteed, past performance does not predict future performance, and platform-level protections vary enormously. Most of the platforms we cover are not covered by any deposit guarantee or investor compensation scheme. We state these limits on every page where we discuss returns, not only here.

Contact

Editorial questions, corrections and source requests: [email protected]. Press and research enquiries: see our press page.