Moneyfacts
Moneyfacts is a Norwich-based financial information company whose data on mortgages, savings accounts, credit cards and loans underpin a large share of British personal finance journalism. Founded in 1988, Moneyfacts Group employs more than 80 people at Moneyfacts House, 66–70 Thorpe Road, Norwich, and describes itself as an independent and unbiased source of financial information. National newspapers, broadcasters and comparison websites quote its average rates, its best-buy research and its market commentary because Moneyfacts monitors the whole retail market continuously: when a newspaper reports that average mortgage rates have risen for a third consecutive month, or that the number of savings products has fallen, the underlying count very often comes from Norwich. In agency terms, Moneyfacts is a data newswire for personal finance — an originator of verified product information that other media republish.
Founded in Norwich in 1988
Moneyfacts was founded in 1988 by John Woods, who remains its founder and executive chairman and who received an honorary doctor of civil law from the University of East Anglia. The venture was established in Norwich, a city with a long insurance and financial services history, and is associated with the development of a school of financial services outside London. It began modestly: the first Moneyfacts was a six-page monthly factsheet that brought personal finance products together in one place so that they could be compared — at the time a novel proposition, since product information was scattered across providers' own literature and comparison was laborious. The founding idea, that consumers and advisers needed the whole market set out impartially on a page, remained the company's organising principle through every later change of format, from printed magazines to databases, analyser software and consumer websites. Woods's continued presence as executive chairman gives the group an unusual continuity among British financial information businesses, most of which have passed through several owners.
From factsheet to magazines
The factsheet grew into a family of monthly subscription magazines for financial advisers and providers. The chronology recorded for the group's products begins with Moneyfacts Magazine, first published in 1988, covering personal finance products; Business Moneyfacts followed in 1994, covering business finance products; and Investment Life & Pensions Moneyfacts was first published in 1996, covering pension and investment products. Those three titles remain the group's publishing core, described as monthly subscription-based magazines for financial advisers. Alongside them, the group produces the INTEREST journal, which examines the effects, positive or negative, that interest rates have on the economy, is dispatched in advance of meetings of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, and is distributed free of charge. The magazines' role is analytical as much as informational: the trends identified in the group's Treasury Reports, discussed below, are published and interpreted for the adviser and provider readership that uses the underlying data professionally.
The data business: who uses Moneyfacts data
The company's influence rests on the reach of its database. Moneyfacts data is used throughout the UK financial industry: recorded users include the Bank of England, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Financial Ombudsman Service, HM Treasury, the Prudential Regulation Authority, UK Finance and the Building Societies Association, as well as virtually every bank and building society in the UK. Its data also powers other UK financial comparison websites, so a consumer comparing products on a third-party site may be looking at Moneyfacts information without seeing the name. The group states that its data and analytics experts constantly monitor the market to provide data and insight across mortgages, savings, credit cards, loans, business banking, insurance and investment products in the UK, and that it regards itself, with over 35 years of work in the field, as a wholly independent source of impartial, accurate, whole-of-market product data for the retail financial industry. Independence is the commercial point: because Moneyfacts is independently owned and does not sell the products it lists, regulators, providers and journalists can all treat its counts and averages as neutral market measurements.
Going online: Moneyfactscompare and the 2000 launch
Moneyfacts launched its consumer website in 2000. The current consumer service, Moneyfactscompare.co.uk, is described by the group as one of the UK's original price comparison websites from 2000, and in 2025 it celebrated its 25th anniversary. The site explains its own commercial model openly: it shows all the products available in its product searches, does not get paid to include products in those searches, and orders results first by products with a direct link to a provider or trusted broker, followed by the rest of the market on the same ordering basis, receiving payment where users click through, apply or buy through those links. Some non-interactive tables are described as featured, where providers have paid to be included, so that they can be distinguished from whole-of-market searches. That transparency matters to the group's reputation with journalists: the editorial research quoted in the press — average rates, product counts, market trends — is produced from the full dataset, separately from the consumer site's commercial links.
Product chronology and professional tools
The recorded sequence of launches shows the business digitising in stages. After the magazines of 1988, 1994 and 1996 came the website in 2000; Market Intelligence Reports in 2003; a Daily News Bulletin in 2003; web services and data feeds in 2005; Treasury Reports in 2009; and Analyser in 2012. Each step moved the same underlying dataset into a new professional workflow: intelligence reports and a daily bulletin for subscribers who needed narrative and news, data feeds for firms that wanted Moneyfacts information inside their own systems, Treasury Reports tracking rate trends for providers setting their own pricing, and Analyser systems allowing detailed product comparison and analysis. The Treasury Reports in particular are highly valued by providers, according to the group's own descriptions, because a lender or savings provider deciding where to price a product needs to know where the whole market moved, not only where its closest rivals sit. This professional tools business, largely invisible to the public, is what funds the continuous monitoring on which the public journalism depends.
Star Ratings
Moneyfacts Star Ratings are the group's best-known consumer-facing judgment. Ratings are awarded to specific categories of products throughout the year, following a calendar recorded on its ratings pages: home insurance, home emergency cover, landlord home insurance and unsecured personal loans in January; SIPP and SSAS products and car insurance in February; pet insurance and equity release in March; private medical insurance in May; business current accounts, business credit cards and commercial mortgages in June; travel insurance in July; and personal current accounts and personal credit cards in October. In assessing a product, Moneyfacts considers whether it has the full range of features expected for that product type, together with additional benefits, optional extras or add-ons that make it stand out from the rest of the market, rather than rating on headline price alone. Use of the Star Ratings logo is strictly subject to licence. A companion Star Ratings Modeller allows providers to analyse and improve their own products and model the effect of changes against competitors and their future annual rating, with full market data for comparison and Excel-based output for internal sharing. Ratings of this kind are frequently quoted in product journalism and in providers' own advertising, always attributed to Moneyfacts as the independent assessor.
Awards and industry events
Moneyfacts Group presents annual awards for product excellence and outstanding service across four ceremonies: the Moneyfactscompare.co.uk Awards, the Business Moneyfacts Awards, the Moneyfacts Awards and the Investment Life & Pensions Moneyfacts Awards, each aligned with one of its publishing and data markets. The group describes these awards as highly coveted and independent, and winning providers publicise them heavily, which in turn keeps the Moneyfacts name in front of the consumers who encounter its research in the press. Separate service star ratings recognise the quality of providers' service as distinct from individual products. Together, the ratings and awards give Moneyfacts a role beyond measurement: it acts as one of the retail finance industry's referees, defining through its criteria what counts as a well-featured product and good service, and publishing the results whether or not the assessed firms are also its data customers.
How the media use Moneyfacts
For news desks, Moneyfacts functions in three ways. First, as a source of market statistics: its regular research on average mortgage and savings rates, product availability and rate movements is issued to journalists and quoted, usually with attribution, in national and regional personal finance coverage — the group's spokespeople and analysts are regular commentators on rate changes, and its press research is republished by money sections as the factual basis for advice features. Second, as an arbiter in product stories, where a Star Rating or an award is cited as independent evidence that a particular account, card or policy is among the better-featured in its class. Third, as infrastructure behind other outlets, through the comparison websites its data powers and the best-buy tables it supplies. This is why the company qualifies for an agencies listing despite publishing mainly for subscribers and consumers: a substantial part of what the British public reads as personal finance news originates as Moneyfacts monitoring.
Company details and position today
Moneyfacts Group plc is registered in England and Wales, company number 4063110, with its registered office at Moneyfacts House, 66–70 Thorpe Road, Norwich NR1 1BJ, and a main telephone number of 01603 476476. Profiles of the group record over 80 employees, with leadership including founder and executive chairman John Woods, finance director Vicky Carter, IT director Rob Hayles and sales and marketing director Richard Ward. More than three and a half decades after a six-page factsheet first set rival products side by side in Norwich, the formula is unchanged in substance and transformed in scale: continuous whole-of-market monitoring, published impartially, and sold to the industry, to regulators and to the media at once. In a financial system where a quarter-point movement in an average rate is national news, Moneyfacts remains one of the small number of organisations trusted to say what that average actually is.
