How Canstar avoids conflicts of interest
Website use and content
Version: 11 November 2012
Canstar is committed to offering comprehensive information to consumers for free.
To generate this quality information we employ around 45 staff with extensive experience in financial services, and we run large computer systems. This costs many millions of dollars every year, and we generate revenue in a range of ways to pay for it.
We go to great lengths to ensure that the commercial relationships we need to survive don’t compromise the quality of our ratings and research.
In many ways we are similar to a quality newspaper. We have outstanding researchers (equivalent to journalists) that publish quality material. Separately to this, we have a team that does the commercial stuff, such as selling advertisements. Just as quality newspapers take their journalism very seriously and separate the commercial side, Canstar takes its research very seriously and goes to great pains to ensure that our results are not biased in any way.
If you accuse a quality journalist of writing a story so they can sell an ad, they are likely to punch you. Our researchers think the same way.
Here are some of the things we do to avoid conflicts of interest:
Our research term is separated from our commercial functions
Canstar holds an Australian Financial Services license and our core research team is separated from the rest of the business and particularly from our commercial functions.
We have a separate team that negotiates our subscriptions and licenses with financial institutions and a separate subsidiary company of Canstar called DDM that negotiates our advertising deals.
You may have heard of the terms ‘chinese walls’ or ‘ring fencing’. All of this is in line with ASIC (ie government regulation) guidelines.
Our data is transparent
Consumers can monitor the data we use in our ratings every day on our website, and can compare this with the bank’s own website.
Further, banks monitor our data very closely to ensure it is correct because they want to make sure they are well placed to win ratings and awards.
Ratings ‘methodologies’ are transparent
We publish all of our methodologies on our website, for all to see and critique. If you were wondering, a ‘methodology’ is basically the way we calculate winners based on the various prices, fees and product features.
For almost all categories we hold an annual workshop with the industry to debate and refine these methodologies. These are sometimes lively affairs, and we’ve included a photo below to give you an idea.
We tell you how we get paid
Details of how we get paid are contained here.
We find that the vast majority of consumers are comfortable with this and appreciate the fact this is clearly displayed.
