Editorial standards at Debt Collection Index
By Kai Greenspan, Founding Editor · Last updated: 2 July 2026
Who is accountable for this site?
Kai Greenspan, Founding Editor, is the named person accountable for everything published on Debt Collection Index. Questions, challenges and corrections about any published fact land with the editor, and the corrections policy sets out how they are handled.
What must every published fact pass?
| Rule | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| A public source | Every fact links to the public record it came from. No source, no publication. |
| A last-checked date | Every fact shows when a person last checked it against that source. |
| Human verification | Nothing gathered automatically is published directly. A person reviews every record before it goes live. |
| Positive framing | Agencies are ranked on positive, verified measures. We never name and shame, and never publish "worst of" lists. |
| No invented data | A missing value stays blank. We never estimate, extrapolate or fill a gap to make a page look complete. |
How is AI used, and how is it not?
Automated agents collect candidate facts from public sources (the CFPB complaint database and state regulator registers) and help draft page copy. They never decide what gets published: every fact passes the human review above before it appears, and the editor is accountable for every page as if it had been written by hand. AI is a research assistant here, not an author of record.
What about paid relationships?
Buyers never pay. Agencies can pay for clearly-labelled featured placement or for buyer leads, and any such placement is marked as paid wherever it appears. Paid relationships never change a merit ranking and never soften a verified fact. The full rules are on the methodology page.