Editorial standards

A rating is only worth what the process behind it is worth. This page sets out who produces the ratings on this site, what evidence a verdict has to rest on before it is published, and what happens when we get something wrong.

Who writes the ratings

Reviews are published under the masthead as BrokerWatcher Research rather than under an individual byline. That is a deliberate choice. This site publishes findings that name real companies and, in some cases, conclude that they are unsafe to deposit with. Those conclusions have to stand on evidence anyone can re-check, not on a reader’s willingness to trust a photograph and a job title.

So we ask to be judged on what can actually be verified: the register entry we cite, the regulator communiqué we quote, the date we checked it, and the arithmetic that turns six pillar scores into a verdict. All of it is on the page. If a claim here cannot survive you checking it at the source, it should not have been published, and we would like to hear about it.

What has to be true before a verdict is published

1. Primary sources only. Licence numbers, entity names and regulator warnings are read on the regulator’s own register or publication. Aggregators and other review sites are not accepted as sources for a fact that decides a verdict. This rule has already caught three errors that would otherwise have been published: a licence reported as expired that the register showed as current, a regulator notice misdated by two years, and a review count taken second-hand.
2. The evidence is dated. Every source in a review carries the date it was checked, because a licence that was valid in September may not be in March.
3. Absence is reported as absence. Where we could not find something, the review says so. A broker with no complaint record is scored as having no complaint record, not as having a bad one.
4. Uncertain claims are marked uncertain. A third-party report we could not confirm is published as a third-party report we could not confirm, with the company’s silence on it noted. It is not upgraded into a finding.
5. The score decides the verdict, not the other way round. Six pillars, fixed weights, applied in the same order every time. We do not pick a verdict and reason backwards to it. See the methodology for the weights and the bands.

Independence

Ratings are not for sale, and no broker can pay to change, soften or remove a verdict. Where a commercial relationship exists with any firm mentioned on this site, it is disclosed on that page and in the link itself. The full position is on the disclosure page.

We also do not link out to any broker we rate as High Risk or Scam. The domain is named in full so you can identify the right firm, but a page telling you not to deposit should not also be the shortest route to the deposit form.

Right of reply

Every broker rated on this site can respond, free, without conditions. Send it to the contact address and it is published unedited beneath the review, clearly attributed, whether or not we agree with a word of it. We do not require a broker to withdraw a complaint, sign anything, or stop disputing the rating in order to have their reply published.

Corrections

We will get things wrong. When we do we want to know quickly, and we would rather be corrected than be wrong in public.

Send the evidence through the contact page: a register entry, a contract clause, a dated transaction reference. Anything we can verify is corrected, and the change is recorded in that broker’s own changelog with the date and the reason. The changelog is permanent and it is public, including the entries that show we were wrong. A ratings site that quietly edits its history is not one you should rely on.

How often ratings are revisited

• Trusted and Neutral: every six months.
• High Risk and Scam: every three months.
• Immediately, whenever a regulator names the firm, a licence status changes, or a documented pattern of complaints shifts.

Every review shows the date it was last verified and the date it is next due.