Moneyfacts

Moneyfacts is an independent provider of data to the financial services industry. It is perhaps best known for its Moneyfacts, Business Moneyfacts and its Investment, Life & Pensions Moneyfacts print publications.

Data displayed on the Moneyfacts website is sourced from the market at large. Moneyfacts does not benefit financially for featuring any retail product in its tables. All revenue derives from advertising.

The site is divided into product arrears covering savings, mortgages, credit cards, loans, onshore and offshore bank accounts; life, pensions & annuities, business (cheque & investment accounts, commercial mortgages) and economy. Each product area is supported by Best Buys, Guides and Latest Articles and occasionally by a market Search engine. All product areas and supports are accessible from overhead menus

Consolidated best buys, guides, calculators, product searches and provider surveys can be accessed from a left-hand menu panel.

The main content lies in the open market search results and the best buys. There are open market search engines for mortgages, savings, credit cards, personal loans, offshore accounts (rates and expat) and business accounts (via the British Bankers Association tables), with multi-criteria filtering.

Unfortunately, the best buys were sometimes inconsistent with the open market search results. For example, under No-Notice savings accounts, the top six best buys were given as Anglo Irish (5.3% AER), Birmingham Midshires (5.25%), Derbyshire (5.20%) and Teachers, Heritable and Mansfield (5.1% each).

The open market search (no-notice, annual or monthly interest) identified Coventry (5.5%), Northern Rock (5.46%), Birmingham Midshires (5.45%), Derbyshire (5.4%), AA (5.35%) and Yorkshire Building Society (5.30%).

In certain other cases, I simply could not trust a best buys listing. For instance, I can't believe that the InterBay rate of 3% above BOE base is a best buy in the residential investment mortgage market.

The remaining content is of indifferent quality at best. The Product Guides are clumsily written and distinctly inexpert in many cases (e.g. Offset Mortgages and Investment Trusts). Moneyfacts seems to have missed the fact that PEPs were abolished in 1998. Recent Articles are of better quality but are often too rudimentary to be really informative.