How We Make Money

We are compensated by lending partners

When you compare lenders on BankMinistry and click through to a partner lender's site, we may receive a referral fee from the lender's affiliate network. The two networks we work with at the time of writing are LeadsMarket and LeadStack Media; the specific compensation model varies by network and by lender — sometimes a fixed referral fee, sometimes a percentage of funded loan value, sometimes a click-based payment.

You pay nothing to use BankMinistry. The lender you ultimately work with does not increase your APR, your fees, or your loan terms because you arrived through our site. The lender's offer to you is identical to what they would offer if you walked in off the street.

What compensation does NOT affect

The lenders we choose to feature. Inclusion in our marketplace is editorial. We evaluate every lender against the criteria below and either accept them into the comparison or decline them. No partner has ever bought their way in.

The order in which lenders appear within a category. Ranking on BankMinistry is determined by a documented editorial priority score that weights APR ranges, fee transparency, state availability, customer-experience signals, and regulatory record. We do not sort by which partner pays the most.

Whether a lender approves you. Approval, loan amount, APR, fees, and disbursement timing are determined by the lender based on its own underwriting. We do not influence those decisions and we do not know the outcome of any specific application.

The accuracy of the rate and fee data we publish. Every advertised APR range and loan limit is fact-checked against the lender's own published source documents. If a lender's published disclosures don't match what they want us to advertise, we publish the disclosures, not the marketing copy.

Our editorial review process

Before a lender is added to BankMinistry's marketplace, our editorial team runs through a documented review checklist. We confirm the lender holds an active consumer-finance license in the states where the offer is shown. We pull the lender's BBB profile and CFPB consumer-complaint history and look for patterns. We read at least two published rate sheets, the e-sign disclosure, the privacy policy, and the standard loan agreement, and we check that advertised APR ranges actually match what the agreement says. We verify the affiliate redirect chain doesn't terminate on a different operator than the one named on the marketing page. And we confirm the customer-service phone number is staffed.

If any of those checks fails, the lender doesn't make the marketplace. If they pass, we publish a review that includes both the strengths and the meaningful drawbacks.

What we look for in a partner

Active state lending licenses in every state where the offer is shown. Transparent APR ranges and fee schedules in the published disclosure documents. A clean or improving BBB profile and CFPB complaint pattern. Soft-pull pre-qualification offered where the borrower expects it. A reasonable e-sign and adverse-action workflow. A customer-service contact path that actually responds. Compliance with the FTC's UDAAP standard, the TCPA, and applicable state small-dollar lending laws.

What disqualifies a lender

Missing state licenses. Undisclosed fees that appear only after the loan is originated. APR ranges in marketing that materially understate the rate in the e-sign agreement. A pattern of CFPB or state attorney-general enforcement actions in the previous 24 months. Use of TCPA-non-compliant outbound calling or texting. Refusal to honor an extended-repayment plan in states where one is required by statute. Choice-of-law clauses that try to override state usury caps. Use of tribal sovereignty as a vehicle to evade state APR limits on a product that is structurally identical to a regulated state product.

Differential compensation, identical ranking

Some partners pay us more than others. That is normal in affiliate-marketing economics — different networks, different products, different conversion rates. The amount a partner pays us has no effect on whether they appear, what we say about them, or what position they hold in the comparison. Ranking is determined entirely by the editorial priority score described above.

We disclose the affiliate relationship inline on every page that surfaces a partner offer. The disclosure follows FTC 16 CFR Part 255 (Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising). We do not run paid editorial. We do not accept gifts. We do not let partners review or approve our coverage of them.

Sponsored vs. editorial

Anywhere on the site where a lender appears because they paid for the specific placement — for example, certain in-page banner units or sticky CTAs — that placement is labeled 'Sponsored' or 'Advertisement.' Lender comparison cards on best-lenders, money pages, and state pages are editorial, not sponsored — they appear based on whether they meet our review standards, ranked by our priority score, and labeled with the same affiliate disclosure that applies to all monetized links.

Questions

If anything on this page is unclear or you want to push back on a ranking decision or our coverage of a specific lender, email disclosure@bankministry.com. Editorial corrections go to editorial@bankministry.com.