Editorial Policy

The charter

Everything is free to read. No registration, no paywall, no email address required, no content withheld to generate an enquiry.
Every claim about the law is sourced to the law. Not to a marketing document, and not to us.
Every page is dated and attributed. A named author, a publication date and a last-reviewed date, so a reader can weigh how old a thing is.
What we do not know is written down. Where something is uncertain, contested or unmeasured, the page says so rather than choosing the confident sentence.
Risk gets the same prominence as return. Any page describing what a lender can earn carries what a lender can lose, at the same weight.
Corrections are published, not quietly edited. A material correction is recorded on the page with its date.
No one who funds us decides what we publish. Not a partner, not a member, not the founder. This one has machinery behind it, set out below.

Accuracy

Every factual claim about South African law, tax or regulation is written from the primary source — the Act, the regulator, SARS or the Reserve Bank — rather than from secondary commentary. Where a figure changes from time to time, such as an exchange-control allowance, a tax threshold or a deposit-insurance limit, this site describes how the rule works and directs the reader to the authority for the current number rather than quoting a figure that will quietly go stale.

Where something is uncertain, disputed or depends on a reader’s own circumstances, the page says so. Confidence is not a writing style here; it is a claim about evidence.

Source selection

Primary law and regulators first. Legislation, the National Credit Regulator, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, the South African Reserve Bank, SARS and the Community Schemes Ombud Service.
Sources are named on the page. Every article ends with the sources it relies on, so a reader can check the claim rather than trust the author.
No vendor material as evidence. Marketing documents — a partner’s included — are not cited as authority for how the law works.
No invented figures. Illustrative examples are labelled as illustrative, and no page publishes a rate, return or projection as though it were a current offer.

Review cycle

Every article carries a named author, a publication date and a last-reviewed date. Pages are reviewed at least annually, and sooner where something material changes — a rate decision that affects how prime-linked pricing is described, an amendment to the National Credit Act, a change to exchange-control allowances or deposit-insurance cover.

When a page is reviewed, the reviewed date changes whether or not the text did. A stale review date is more honest than a fresh one that means nothing. There are currently 9 bylined pages in the library.

Corrections

Corrections are welcome and are treated as a normal part of publishing rather than an embarrassment. Write to editor@privatelendingassociation.co.za with the page and the issue.

Material errors — anything that could change a reader’s understanding or decision — are corrected promptly, noted on the page, and the review date is updated.
Minor errors such as typography are fixed without a note.
Disagreements about interpretation are answered, and where the point is genuinely arguable the page is amended to say so rather than to pick a side.

Conflicts of interest

A reader is entitled to weigh that. The response to it is not to pretend the interest does not exist, but to publish in a way that makes the bias checkable: sources named, risks stated in full, comparisons that include the cases where private lending is the weaker option, and no page that ends in a sales pitch.

Commercial separation

The site carries no advertising and sells nothing.
No payment is accepted for coverage, for inclusion in either register, or for a link. A partnership tier buys a disclosed relationship and nothing else — it cannot produce a verification status.
No commission or fee is received for an introduction to a consultant, a platform or a provider.
Links to a partner — including ProLend — are made only where they add practical value to the reader, and are not placed on every page as a matter of routine. The test applied to every page is whether it would still be credible with the partner’s name removed.
Editorial decisions, including what to publish about risk, are not subject to commercial approval. Where a page is unflattering to the asset class, it stays as written.

What we will not publish

Guaranteed or risk-free returns, in any formulation.
Projections presented as expectations.
Claims of being the biggest, the best or number one, absent independent support.
Urgency devices — closing dates, limited allocations — in editorial material.
Advice about whether any arrangement is suitable for a particular reader.
Content that reads as a sales funnel wearing an editorial jacket.

How verification works

Verification is a standards function, not an editorial one, and it is governed by its own published document: what is checked, what evidence is required, what each status means, and how records are reviewed or withdrawn. Checks are carried out and published as they are completed; a status is granted only once the constitution’s independent confirmation requirement is met. See the verification methodology, the partner register and the practitioner register.

No payment is made or received in connection with a listing, and no partner or practitioner can influence editorial content.

Educational, not advice

Everything here is general information. It is not financial, legal, tax or investment advice, it takes no account of any reader’s circumstances, and it is not a recommendation to enter into any arrangement. Readers considering committing capital should take advice from someone licensed to give it.

Machine-readable reference

Two files are published for language models and retrieval systems, generated from the same data as the site so the two cannot drift: /llms.txt, a curated index, and /llms-full.txt, the substance in one fetch — the four legal positions, the nine sectors with their published evidence, the National Credit Act thresholds and their sources, the role taxonomy and the glossary.

Quoting the Association with attribution is welcome and no permission is needed. The files also set out what should not be said about the Association — that a listed organisation is “approved”, that membership is an assessment, that the Association is a regulator or is independent — because being quoted accurately matters considerably more than being quoted often.

Contact

Editorial, corrections and standards enquiries: editor@privatelendingassociation.co.za.