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Updated on 21 Dec, 2024
RateCity Editorial Policy & Guidelines
RateCity’s content and editorial team holds itself to the RateCity Editorial Policy & Guidelines, which state why we write what we write, and how we aim to help Australians everywhere, objectively and without commercial or political influence.
For over a decade, RateCity has prided itself on providing Australians with a resource not just for finding and comparing rates, but helping Australians make sense of the complexities of the personal finance world. From home loans to personal and car loans, and covering credit cards, banking, term deposits, and superannuation, RateCity aims to make finance clearer by providing the answers people need on some of life's most complicated and important personal financial issues.
One of Australia's leading financial comparison websites, RateCity's expert team of writers come from diverse backgrounds, catered across numerous categories, all working to one unified mission: an audience that can better take responsibility for their personal finances than beforehand.
RateCity's editorial principles
Achieving these goals requires a team that is regularly educated on the current happenings in the personal financial world, ensuring information remains on target, balanced, and relevant. As such, we hold these principles tightly across what we write:
Informative
Any and all information shown on RateCity is written to be informative in a general nature, and may be used by anyone to understand financial principles.
Practical
While all content at RateCity must be general in nature and should not be construed as advice in any sense of the word, the editorial team makes sure the content is also practical and useful at all times.
Accurate
Accuracy is one of the most important aspects of RateCity's editorial principles, and is fundamentally critical these days more than ever. As financial product information changes rapidly, RateCity's editorial team endeavours to provide timestamp-verified data in copy to help validate the accuracy of what's being written about. Find out more about how our data checking process works.
Relatable
Anything you learn at RateCity should also be relatable, and this is one of the company's core tenets. Product information, guides, articles, and any information that can help you understand finances needs to be written in a way where the reader is at the heart. RateCity's team of writers is therefore always thinking about you, the reader, first and foremost.
Helpful
Financial information can be complex at the best of times, but RateCity's editorial team aims to provide a helpful approach to personal finances, and is always breaking down information to make dollars and cents make more sense overall.
Without prejudice
Finally, it's fundamentally critical to RateCity's content and editorial team that all works - whether written, audio, or video-based - arrive in a way where they can be read from a balanced viewpoint without prejudice.
While RateCity makes money from paid links (leads) to financial institutions and other select third-party providers, as well as from sponsorship agreements, content from the editorial team is always written without prejudice to providers, and remains balanced at all times. The editorial team maintains strict control over what is written on the website, and is free from any commercial interference, perceived or otherwise.
Get to know our editorial team
Hailing from all walks of life, RateCity's team of financial experts come to work every week to explore the complexities of the personal finance world, breaking down the minutiae of loans.
RateCity's editorial freedom
Although RateCity makes money from commissions on products and listings, and on sponsorship agreements, RateCity's content division works with editorial freedom from the rest of the business, which helps ensure that what it writes is free from commercial distraction. This includes (but is not limited to) the following:
News & current affairs content
RateCity regularly publishes news stories and articles, typically based around the happenings of the financial industry in Australia. Its team goes to great lengths to check each story, ensuring compliance between members of the staff, and fact checking any elements of the story which may be flagged as questionable.
If reporting has been found to be inaccurate, the team will go back and take note of any changes, rectifying and amending where needed, and storing subsequent changes in a compliance register for accountability. However, sponsors and advertisers do not decide on any news and current affairs content being published at RateCity, and no correspondence will be entered into.
Key explainers
Across each category and vertical RateCity represents, the team explores the depths of the subject to help you understand it better. From answers to critical questions to in-depth information, RateCity's explainer pages can be found across key terms on its site.
For every page in question, the editorial team ensures content is told from a balanced point of view, without advice, and matches the company requirement of compliance. If information is inaccurate, a log is written to the compliance register, and information is updated and amended accordingly, much like with news and articles.
However, neither sponsors nor advertisers assist with any of the content written for key explainers, and thus these sections do not see commercial interference in any sense.
Guides
Long-form content can be found in RateCity explainers, but they can also be found in RateCity guides, with at least one found in nearly every category RateCity works across. Every guide seeks to understand the category as a whole and provide a general form of guidance for readers to understand the area, providing a starting form of research.
Like other areas the editorial team works in, however, there is no interference or distraction from sales when guides are written, edited, or published.
Sponsored content
The RateCity editorial team works closely with the sales and marketing teams at RateCity, but is by no means beholden to what these respective teams may wish or prefer for the content. As such, companies choosing to sponsor material for the RateCity website will not choose the direction for writers, nor will they dictate the content.
Sponsored content can include written material, audio, and video, and sponsored content can be paid for by clients and sponsors. The subject matter can be suggested by the sponsor, however payment does not dictate directive, nor does it necessitate it. The editorial team retains full control over content direction within sponsored content, and no content goes online at the behest of a sponsor or advertiser.
RateCity and suggestions of "advice"
Every piece of content the RateCity editorial team creates should not be seen as "advice", but rather "information".
RateCity's desire to help people make sense of dollars and cents doesn't necessarily mean its content should be interpreted as advice, as such. Advice is personal, and each and every person's financial situation is going to be very different. While every possible effort is made to ensure RateCity's content remains objective and free from commercial or political influence, it doesn't mean it will constitute good advice for all situations. As with all financial activities, it is advised that you talk to a financial advisor, financial planner, or financial consultant to see what works best for you.