Tribal lending is the least transparent corner of American consumer credit: high-cost
products, sovereign legal questions, and marketing that outruns disclosure. This site
exists to fill that gap with transcribed facts.
What we do
Lender facts, transcribed. Every brand in our directory is documented from its own website and archived copies — tribe, amounts, published costs, exclusion lists, regulator. We re-verify on a rolling basis and date every fact.
State law, side by side. Each state page puts the state’s own licensed-loan law next to the tribal market, plus the state’s enforcement history — so the comparison is concrete, not rhetorical.
Math, shown. Worked payment examples on every cost page use published rates, and we show the arithmetic so you can check it.
Guides with sources. Our research desk cites court decisions, FTC and CFPB actions, and state settlements — and say plainly when the answer is “it depends.”
What we are not
We are not a lender, broker, or agent for any lender. We are not affiliated with any
tribe or lending entity reviewed here, and no brand sponsors this site. We do earn
referral commissions when readers use our application form — that is our only revenue,
it never changes the facts we transcribe, and our advertising
disclosure and editorial policy spell out the rules.
Why every fact carries a date
Lender terms move without announcement: a fee table gets revised, a state drops off an
exclusion list, a licensing partner changes. A number without a date is only a rumor, so
every record in the directory and every state page states
when its facts were last pulled from the source. When a re-verification changes a figure,
the record changes with it and the old claim goes away — we do not keep a stale price
alive because it flatters a comparison.
The scoring promise
Each indexed lender carries a score from a formula you can read on the
methodology page: what goes in, what each factor weighs, and
what knocks a record down. We publish the inputs precisely because a score you cannot
audit is just a ranking dressed up. If you disagree with a weight, the arithmetic sits on
the table, and the data behind every input is downloadable from the
data page.
The records and the form are kept apart
The directory, the state pages, and the research desk are editorial. The application form
is a separate matching funnel operated by a third party, and the two do not share a desk:
editorial staff never see form submissions, and the matching partner has no say in what a
record says. Where a reader follows a link from a record into the form, the record itself
keeps its sources, its dates, and its critical notes exactly as written.
Who writes it
Josephine Adler (Lead researcher, the Index) and Elias Thornberry (Legal & enforcement editor) write and
review every page. Meet them on the editorial team page.
Where we are
Tribal Lenders Index Media 1600 Amphitheatre Way, Billings, MT 59101 [email protected]