How We Review Products and Services
Updated Nov. 26, 2024
You may have seen the following disclosure on all of our business, commercial, and financial product and services reviews and reco𒊎mmendations. It reads:
"We independently evaluate all recommended products and services. If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation. Learn more."
Here we'll outline the processes that result in unbiased, trustworthy reviews you can rely on. Investopedia maintains strict independence between the editorial process by which we evaluate products and the development of financial relationships by the sales staff. The sales staff have no influence over product scores and whether or not we recommend a product. We do make money on some, but not all, of the products we recommend, if you click on a link. Partner relationships may affect where a recommendation appears on our page.
The Team
Our financial product and services team includes editors, researchers, and a compliance staff, comprising current and former industry practitioners and dedicated journalists. Together, we have decades of experience covering such financial topics as investments, financial markets, and business and personal finance for publications that include Bankrate, Business Insider, CNBC, CreditCards.com, Fox Business, InvestmentNews, Marketwatch, and US News & World Report. We rely on our years of expertise researching and using financial products to offer important, unbiased insights, so readers can make informed 🌃decisions about their financial lives.
But we don't do it alone. We are committed to ensuring that our content and team reflects a diversity of voices. You can read our full 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Diversity & Inclusion Pledge here, and you can learn more about our 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:editorial team on our About Us page.
Types of Reviews
We publish reviews of business services, f🍌inancial education resources, and financial products, and those reviews mostly follow one of these formats:
- Roundups of our top recommendations in a product category (e.g. Best Online Brokerage A♍ccounts and Trading Platforms)
- Individual product reviews (e.g. 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Fidelity Review)
- Head-to-head product comparisons (澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:E*TRADE vs. Fidelity)
How We Choose the Best Products
Recommendations we make on Investopedia generall💧y fall into one of the followin𝔍g categories:
- Recommendations determined by a proprietary scoring methodology we've developed using our deep subject matter expertise and detailed research.
- Recommendations that rely on our deep subject matter expertise and detailed research.
- Daily “best rate” recommendations based on our proprietary databases of deposit accounts such as certificates of deposit and savings accounts.
How We Develop Scores and Star Ratings
When reviewing finan♈cial products and business services, we start by researching the industry to supplement our staff expertise on the product.🔴 Based on that research—which sometimes includes a survey of consumers using these products—we determine which companies and what product features to evaluate. From there, we gather the data, develop an in-depth methodology to rate the criteria, and use the methodology to determine the overall scores for those companies and/or their products. Most, but not all, of the articles featuring these product recommendations display star ratings, indicating the overall score of that product among all the products we researched in that category. We always score our data and companies, but we may not always display the star ratings on our roundup pages.
We've developed robust methodologies for categories including, but not limited to:
- 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Online brokerage 🍸accounts and trading platforms
- 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Credit repair companies
- 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Life insurance companies
- 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Debt relief companies
- 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Dental insurance companies
- 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Health insurance companies
- 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Home warranty companies
- 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Medicare companies
- 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Personal loans
'Best Rate' Financial Product Recommendations
When the primary value of a financial product comes from the interest rate an account pays, such as CDs and high-yield savings accounts, we structure our reviews a little differently. We collect the rates daily, across hundreds of institutions, to find the best rates. We rank products on the strength of the rate they currently offer and apply editorial filters on top of those to rule out products we don't deem great for consumers.
Our full methodology provides detail on howꦍ we evaluate certificates of deposit (CDs), savings accounts, and money market ꧃accounts,🐬 and here are some examples of the recommendations we make using this process: