Editorial policy

Who writes the pages

Articles, the rate board and the calculators are prepared by the TrustCedar Rate Desk, the site’s editorial team. “TrustCedar Rate Desk” is the byline on every article. We do not publish under invented names, and we do not attach credentials, photos or titles to people who have not agreed to be named and do not hold them.

The Rate Desk writes about personal loan rates, the benchmarks behind them, the economic releases that move them and the alternatives to a personal loan. We do not write lender reviews, and we do not tell any reader which loan to take.

Sources, in order of weight

1. Primary official sources. Federal Reserve statements and releases (FOMC statements, H.15, G.19, the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey), the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Treasury, statutes and regulations as published on ecfr.gov, and guidance from the CFPB, FDIC, NCUA, FTC and IRS. FRED, run by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, is used for dated values of Fed series.
2. State regulators and courts, when a page touches a state rule.
3. Published market surveys with a stated method, such as Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey, named in the text.
4. Commercial sources such as credit bureaus or consumer finance sites, used only for market context, named in the text and never as the only support for a rule or a rate.

If we cannot confirm a figure in a source we opened, we leave the figure out and describe the point in words.

Dates on every page

Each article shows when it was published and when it was last updated. Its sources box names the documents we used and ends with a check note: the date on which we compared the facts on the page with those sources. A rate board row shows the date of its reading, or its quarter for a quarterly survey. Policy pages show the date they last changed.

We review a page when a source it relies on publishes new data, for example after an FOMC decision, a G.19 release or a CPI report. When a figure changes, the “Updated” date and the check note change with it.

How numbers and examples are produced

Drafts may be prepared with software tools, including writing and calculation tools. No figure is published because a tool produced it: every rate, date and rule on a page is checked by the Rate Desk against the source named on that page.

Worked examples are computed with the formulas shown on How the numbers work and are labeled as examples. We do not present an example as a rate anyone will be offered.

We describe forecasts as what they are. When we mention where rates may go, we say whose projection it is and its date, such as the Fed’s Summary of Economic Projections or market pricing on a given day. We do not state predictions as fact.

Independence from the companies that pay

TrustCedar is paid by lenders and loan brokers for loan requests that visitors choose to send (How we make money). Those companies do not see articles before they are published, cannot ask for changes, and cannot buy placement, mentions or favorable conclusions. When a credit union loan, savings or another option is the cheaper route, our head-to-head pages say so.

We do not accept gifts, sponsored articles or paid links.

No reviews, ratings or testimonials

We do not review or rank lenders, and we publish no star ratings, scores, customer reviews or testimonials. When a lender is named, it is a factual example taken from an official source, not a recommendation.

Corrections

If you find an error, tell us through the contact page with the page address and what you believe is wrong. We check the report against the source. If we were wrong, we fix the page, change its “Updated” date and, for a correction that changes a figure or a conclusion, say on the page what was corrected. Changes to tracked rules and rates are also logged on the news desk.