How we score every bank.
We are paid for advisory work and referral fees, not for ranking positions. Here is exactly how a provider earns its place.
- 5
- Ranking parameters
- 12
- Providers scored
- Sep 2026
- Last review
- 30%Approval reality
- 25%Total cost of ownership
- 20%Regulatory standing
- 15%Time to open
- 10%Service and tooling
Payment is not one of these parameters. Affiliate fees and paid placements are labelled separately and do not move a provider up or down.
What never affects a score
The five parameters above are the only ones that set a provider's position. Affiliate commission, advertising spend and paid placements are recorded separately and labelled on the page where they appear, for example the featured partner bar and the bank of the month. They never move a provider up or down the ranking, and not every provider we list pays us at all. Any provider can be removed from our index if a regulator action or repeated onboarding failures appear in our case data.
We do list only providers we can support end to end, which is a selection choice we state openly: it means branch-only banks and private banks we cannot apply to directly are covered through our advisors rather than ranked here.
See the 2026 ranking