Lead researcher, the Index

Josephine Adler

Builds and maintains the lender index: pulls every published rate sheet, exclusion list, and tribal regulator docket, and stamps each record with the date it was last verified. Writes the cost math and the APR monitor series.

What Josephine works on

The index itself: every rate sheet pull, every exclusion list, every verification stamp and its date — plus the cost math and the APR monitor series on the research desk.

The method, start to finish

A record starts with a pull: the lender’s own pricing page, licensing disclosure, exclusion list, and regulator entry, plus an archived snapshot in case the page moves. Transcription comes next — figures copied exactly, missing disclosures described as missing, marketing language left out. Then the stamp: the record gets the date it was verified, and only a fresh pull replaces it. Scoring runs last, on the published formula, from the transcribed inputs. Four steps, in that order, for every card in the directory, with the pull list kept identical from brand to brand so a gap in one record means the lender does not publish it — not that nobody looked.

What she owns on the site

The directory and every verification date on it, the cost math shown on record and amount pages, and the APR monitor series on the research desk. When a lender changes its published terms, she re-pulls the source, restamps the card, and the change is visible in the record rather than buried in a footnote.

Records and notes by Josephine

Corrections and source tips: contact the desk. Facts are dated on every page; when a lender changes its terms, the record changes with a new verification date.