How the checking works

1. 01

   Planning

   Decide what gets covered, and brief it

   The content roadmap and the keyword strategy behind it are planned first, then writers are briefed on what to cover and how to approach it. Nothing is commissioned without a brief.

   A brief per piece, and a writer who knows which claims will be checked.

2. 02

   Source Verification

   Check the claim against the broker, not against a summary

   Spreads, fees, account types and platform features are checked against the broker's own website and its trading platform. A third-party summary is not treated as a source, and a claim is not taken on trust because a writer made it.

   Each checked figure is either confirmed against the primary source or sent back. If it does not match, it does not publish.

3. 03

   Cross-Checking

   Cross-check against the recorded data set

   Broker information is recorded centrally before a review is written or updated, and writers confirm those details independently as they work. The two records are then reconciled against each other before anything is published.

   One reconciled data set per broker, covering the 100+ data points collected for each review.

4. 04

   Final Approval

   Sign it off, or it does not go live

   Every review and every update passes a single final approval before publication. This is the step his employer names him for on two separate pages, and it is the one that makes the rest of the procedure enforceable rather than aspirational.

   A published review, or one held back. There is no third outcome.

5. 05

   Maintenance

   Recheck it, because broker pricing moves

   Published spread data is reviewed and updated monthly. Every broker is reassessed against the full framework once a year, typically in January, and individual reviews are updated out of cycle whenever something material changes, such as a regulatory change, a fee restructure or a platform change.

   A dated figure rather than an undated one. Accuracy is treated as something maintained, not something achieved once.

David is the editorial gate on the data. He is not the scoring model. Once a figure is confirmed it feeds into the ranking his employer publishes and maintains, which scores each broker across weighted categories and combines them into a single figure out of 100. That model, and the weight given to each category, is documented on their site rather than restated on this one.

Read the eight weighted criteria and the CompareForexBrokers trust page, which describes the same sign-off from the employer's side.

• It is not the scoring

  The steps above collect and check data. Turning that into a score out of 100 and a ranking is a separate model, it belongs to CompareForexBrokers, and its weightings are published there rather than here.

• A figure without a date is not a figure

  Spreads, fees and account conditions change. Every check is a check on the day it was made, which is why the cadence above is stated in months and years rather than implied to be continuous.

• It is not financial advice

  Checking that a broker offers what it says it offers is a statement about the broker. It is not a recommendation, and it does not assess whether any broker suits an individual reader.