Editorial & AI policy

Our standards

We write for professionals who act on what they read, so accuracy comes before speed.

• Every figure names its source and period, and links to the original where one is public.
• Figures are reproduced as the source published them. We don't adjust, smooth or seasonally correct them; where we derive a figure, such as an average loan, we say how.
• We label the latest FLA month provisional until the next release, because the FLA can revise it.
• News based on a company announcement is checked against the announcement itself, not only other coverage.
• We don't publish claims that another firm has broken the rules unless a regulator, court or ombudsman has said so.

Sources

Each article lists its sources and what each one supports, and every paragraph that relies on a source links to it. An article can't be published until someone has opened every source link and confirmed it supports the text.

How we use AI

Most of our articles are drafted with the help of an AI model. A person edits each one and decides whether it is published.

• An AI model drafts from sources we name: FLA and Bank of England releases, FCA and Financial Ombudsman Service publications, company announcements.
• Each figure is then checked against its primary source or the Secured Loan Index dataset, and each quote against the page it comes from. Anything we can't verify is cut or held back.
• An editor edits the copy to our house style and approves it. Every change to the site goes through a reviewed pull request, and an automated check rejects banned phrases and unfilled placeholders.
• Charts are drawn by our code directly from the published data. We don't publish AI-generated images.

Sponsored content

Sponsored content is labelled “Sponsored” on the homepage, in section lists, on the article, in feeds and in the page data search engines read. Our editorial team doesn't write it and sponsors never see journalism before it's published. Full rules are in our sponsorship policy.

Conflicts of interest

Lending Intelligence is independently owned (see ownership). Two things readers should know about:

• We run the Secured Loan Index.When we report its figures we say it's ours, and we report them as the FLA and the Bank of England publish them, whether the news is good or bad.
• We promote Archway.Archway Software has no ownership or commercial link with us. Its promotions are labelled “Promotion”, say they aren't paid for, and follow our sponsorship rules. We don't rank or recommend Archway against competitors in our journalism, and it doesn't see our journalism before it's published.

Corrections

If we get something wrong we correct it promptly and say so at the foot of the article, with the date. Figures revised by their source are updated and noted. To report an error, use our contact page.