Banking Methodology
How Truva will score and compare savings accounts, digital banks, and time deposits once the banking True Value Score goes live.
The first question is simple: what does the saver actually earn and how painful is it to keep earning it?
Banking products often look deceptively easy to rank because the headline rate is visible. The actual saver outcome depends on tax, lock-in, insurance, payout timing, and whether the headline rate survives real-world behavior month after month.
Core inputs
What the future banking True Value Score will care about
After-tax yield
Banking recommendations start with what the saver actually keeps after final tax, not with the gross headline alone.
Liquidity
A liquid savings account and a locked time deposit are solving different problems. Ranking should reflect that instead of pretending yield exists in a vacuum.
Conditions complexity
A rate that requires monthly spending, promo enrollment, or balance behavior should be harder to win with than a rate a saver can keep quietly.
Insurance and safety
PDIC coverage, government backing, and product structure deserve visible treatment because safety is part of return, not separate from it.
Payout structure
Daily, monthly, and maturity-only payout schedules change how useful a product is for different savings goals.
What this means in practice
A clean 4.0% after-tax account with no monthly behavior requirements may outrank a heavily conditional 4.2% account for many savers because the real-world keep rate is more reliable.
A one-year time deposit may outrank a liquid account on return, but not for an emergency-fund use case. The methodology needs to reflect that context instead of flattening every product into one number.
Guardrails
Partner compensation should not boost a banking product above a better after-tax alternative.
A temporary promo should not outrank a durable product without an explicit caveat.
Editorial articles can explain context, but they should not override the comparison logic.
Related trust pages
Pair the ranking rules with the disclosure rules
The methodology explains how banking products will be evaluated. The editorial-integrity page explains how commercial relationships are labeled and why they cannot buy favorable coverage.