Editorial Guidelines

Editorial decisions are made independently of advertising relationships. That means:

• The default rate-list sort is comparison rate ascending — applied uniformly, never adjusted to favour an advertiser.
• Coverage in news, guides, and reviews does not depend on whether a lender or brand has a commercial relationship with us.
• Advertising slots are visually distinct, labelled Advertisement, and never mixed with organic ranking.
• Editorial staff don’t see advertiser briefs before deciding what to cover.

Every claim of fact in a guide or news article is sourced from one or more of:

• Primary lender disclosures (rate cards, key fact sheets, product disclosure statements).
• Australian regulators — ASIC, APRA, RBA, ATO, Treasury, AFCA.
• Statutory data — the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 and its regulations, the Privacy Act 1988, the Tax Act.
• Reputable news media for market events that aren’t in primary sources.

Where a claim depends on interpretation (for example, whether a particular structure qualifies as an investment loan vs owner-occupier), we disclose the interpretation and link to the underlying source.

Some practices are off-limits regardless of commercial pressure:

• We don’t take payment to alter, omit, or reorder products on the rate-list or comparison pages.
• We don’t publish “sponsored content” that isn’t clearly labelled as such.
• We don’t use AI-generated content for primary news or guides without human review and fact-check; AI assists with first drafts and structure, but a person with relevant expertise signs off before publish.
• We don’t scrape and republish other comparison sites’ analysis as our own.

Before publishing, every guide goes through a checklist: claims sourced, math verified, statutory references current, comparison-rate examples computed against the $150,000-over-25-years base, and lender names spelled and capitalised correctly.

After publishing, if a reader, lender, or our internal QA process flags an error:

1. Material factual errors are corrected within 5 business days.
2. The corrected version replaces the original, with the change noted at the top of the page.
3. If the original error caused real reader harm, we contact AFCA and the affected parties directly.

To report an error, email hello@ratesniffers.com.au with the URL and the issue. Our broader complaints process is on the Complaints page.

We disclose:

• Any commercial relationship between Ratesniffers and a lender or product mentioned in editorial content (where one exists).
• The fact that we receive a referral fee if a reader who books a broker consultation through this site goes on to settle a loan with that broker.
• Any personal financial-product holdings that an editorial reviewer has, where those holdings could reasonably be perceived as influencing the analysis.

Disclosures appear in-line in the article when relevant, and the standing site-wide disclosure is in the footer and the “Important information” modal.

We use AI tools to: speed up first-draft research, structure comparison tables, generate calculator test cases, and translate jargon-heavy disclosures into plain English. We don’t use AI to: invent rate data, fabricate quotes, generate fictional borrower scenarios for guides, or auto-publish content without human review.

Every published article has a human reviewer accountable for the claims in it.