Disclosure

Advertising disclosure

The short version

Tribal Lenders Index is an independent editorial site. We are not a lender, broker, or agent for any lender. Our only revenue is referral commissions: when a reader submits our application form (at /apply/), the matching partner may pay us a commission. That compensation never buys placement in our reviews, rankings, or guides — we do not sell reviews, and reviewed brands cannot pay to change what we say about them.

What this means in practice

• The form is operated by a third party. The application widget on /apply/ is provided by our matching partner; data you enter there is governed by the partner’s own privacy policy, not ours.
• Commissions don’t set the facts. Lender tables are transcribed from each brand’s own published terms. If a brand stops publishing its pricing, we say so — we don’t smooth it over.
• No sponsored content. We publish no paid posts, no paid “reviews,” no affiliate links inside lender facts. Links to a lender’s own site are unmonetized and marked as external.
• Criticism stays. Enforcement history, missing disclosures, and worked cost examples appear on review pages regardless of any commercial relationship.

How the funnel is funded

The matching partner connects applicants to lenders in its network and is paid by those lenders when a referred application leads somewhere; a share of that reaches us as a referral commission. We are paid on action, not on opinion — nothing in the arrangement pays for a better score, a softer description, or the removal of enforcement history. If no reader ever submits the form, the records keep running on the same rules; the commission funds the verification work, it does not define it.

Why the records accept no payment

A registry is worth reading only if it cannot be bought. Inclusion in the directory, the scoring inputs, and the criticism on each record follow the published methodology; there is no rate card for placement, no tier for brands that pay, and no quiet delisting of brands that criticize us. A lender’s fastest route to a better record is to publish clearer terms — which the record then transcribes.

What we are not

We are not owned by, operated by, or endorsed by any tribe, tribal lending entity, or lender network. Any resemblance of our domain to another company’s brand is coincidental to the generic search terms we cover. Questions: records@tribal-lenders.com.

What a reader should assume

• The form earns us money; the records do not. Reading a record costs you nothing and pays us nothing.
• Order and scores in the directory are editorial, not auctioned — brands cannot buy placement.
• Any offer you receive comes from the lender that sends it, under its agreement — never from us.
• The honest framing: we earn only if you choose to apply, so nothing on the editorial side gains by hiding a brand’s costs or its enforcement history.