Lender facts (amounts, terms, costs, exclusion lists, regulators) are transcribed from
the lender’s own website or its archived copies, with a verification date on the page.
State figures come from statutes and regulators. Legal guides cite court decisions and
enforcement records. We do not publish numbers we cannot source.
The line we draw is between documents and marketing. A published fee table, a licensing
disclosure, a filed court record, or a regulator’s order is a document — we transcribe it
and date it. A claim that appears only in an advertisement (“fastest funding in the
nation”) is marketing — we do not restate it as fact, and when a brand’s marketing
contradicts its own documents, the record says which one we could verify.
Independence rule
Tribal Lenders Index earns referral commissions from its application form — from the matching
partner, not from reviewed brands. No lender reviewed on this site sponsors it, previews
it, or can remove itself from criticism. “Paused” lenders are marked paused; brands with
missing disclosures are described as such; litigation and enforcement history appear on
review pages because it is material, not because it is flattering.
Claims we don’t make
No “guaranteed approval” claims — no lender can lawfully guarantee approval.
No fake urgency (“3 spots left today”) and no invented review counts.
No borrowed credentials: author bios describe our own editorial roles.
No rates presented as offers — worked examples are computed illustrations from published figures.
Who writes and reviews
Pages are written by Josephine Adler, Lead researcher, the Index; guides with legal content are
reviewed by Elias Thornberry, Legal & enforcement editor, before publication. Bylines with dates
appear on every page, and the sitemap carries the same modified dates the pages show.
Conflicts of interest
The commission described in our advertising
disclosure is the only money this site receives: no reviewed lender pays us, and no
tribe or lender network holds an interest in it. Editors accept no gifts or favors from
brands in the index, and coverage decisions — inclusion, scoring, criticism — are made
by the published rules, not by the partner. If a conflict ever arises that these rules
cannot resolve, the affected page carries a disclosure rather than a quiet edit.
Corrections
Send corrections to [email protected]. We
re-verify against the lender’s own materials — not against another website — update the
page, and refresh the “verified” date. Material corrections are made within days, not on
the next sweep. If we disagree with a correction, the reply says which source we used, so
the disagreement can be resolved against the document rather than argued in a vacuum.
Update cadence
Lender tables and state availability are re-verified on a rolling basis at least
quarterly, and whenever a brand changes its published terms. Enforcement history is
updated as cases land — a ruling, a settled order, or a state AG announcement moves the
piece that describes it, and the updated date changes with it.