Pigmity publishes facts about institutions and the rules they work under. This page sets out how those facts are gathered, dated and corrected, so that anyone can check the work rather than take it on trust.
What Pigmity records
Pigmity extracts facts from what institutions and regulators publish: a stated rate, a minimum deposit, a term, a listing on a register. Each fact is recorded with the source it came from.
Pigmity does not copy institutions' pages, brochures, tables or marketing text. It summarises the fact and links to the source. Where a few words are quoted, they are short and attributed.
Which sources come first
When the same fact is available from more than one place, Pigmity prefers sources in this order:
- A regulator or statutory authority
- A Government of India or state government database
- The institution's own website
- A document the institution publishes
- An annual report
- A public filing
- A secondary source, such as a news report
- Information submitted by a reader or an institution
Where a regulator publishes a fact, Pigmity uses the regulator. Whether a bank appears on the DICGC insured-bank register is taken from the register itself, never from the institution's description of itself and never inferred from the kind of institution it is.
Every fact carries its dates
- Retrieved is the date Pigmity read the source.
- Source dated appears only when the source states its own date.
- Effective appears only when the source states when a figure took effect. Otherwise the page says the effective date is not stated.
Pigmity does not infer or estimate any of these dates.
Unknown is not no
When a fact is missing, Pigmity says why:
- Not publicly stated on the reviewed source means the page was read and does not give the fact.
- Not established from reviewed public sources means Pigmity has not established it.
Neither is ever shown as "No", "0" or "Nil". Nil appears only where a source itself states a nil rate.
How certain a fact is
Most facts are marked verified: read directly from the source cited. Where that is not quite true, the page says so beside the fact:
- Partially verified: the source supports the fact only in part, or it follows from something the source does state, such as a district named in a bank's registered name.
- Not verified: recorded, but not confirmed from a source Pigmity could cite for it.
- Conflicting: sources disagree, and the page does not pick one.
When facts are checked again
Facts go stale, so each has a review date:
- Register listings are due again 30 days after they were read.
- Product terms such as rates, deposits and closure rules are due again after 60 days.
- Identity facts such as a name, type or location are due again after a year.
Pages are built on a date. Any fact past its review date when a page is built is marked on that page as due for re-verification.
How changes are shown
A change is shown only when two dated readings of a fact differ. Unless the source states an effective date, the page says what Pigmity previously observed and when. It does not say the institution changed something on a particular day, because a reading date is not the date a change took effect.
Earlier readings are kept. A correction adds a new reading; it never overwrites the old one.
Who appears in the directory
Pigmity keeps a record for institutions it knows about, but only institutions whose identity or product terms have been verified appear in public. An institution known to run a scheme whose terms could not be read stays in the internal record rather than appearing as an empty row.
Comparisons and counts
A comparison publishes its criteria before its results, states which institutions are included and which are not, and shows missing information as missing. Ordering institutions by what they publish is not a finding that one product is better than another.
Every count about the directory printed on a page is computed from the underlying records when the page is built, so a sentence cannot say something different from the data.
Money and independence
No institution pays for inclusion, position or wording in anything Pigmity publishes. Commercial status, should it ever exist, is recorded separately from facts, and the code that orders a comparison cannot read it.
A profile being claimed by an institution would not make its facts verified. Information an institution supplies is recorded as supplied by that institution until it is checked against a published source.
Personal information
Pigmity records facts about institutions, not about the people who bank with them. It does not collect account numbers, passbook details, balances, Aadhaar, PAN or any customer's information. Its forms are closed and accept nothing at all; see Privacy.
Reading public websites
Pigmity reads public pages one at a time, as a person would. It does not bypass logins, CAPTCHAs, paywalls or other access controls, and it does not copy or republish whole government databases. Before any automated collection from a source, Pigmity records what is collected, how often, and on what basis the source may be used.
Editorial responsibility
Pages are published under the Pigmity name. No individual editor is named yet. When one is, this page will say who they are and what relevant experience they have, and no page will be attributed to anyone who did not write or review it.
What this page is not
This describes how Pigmity works. It is not legal or financial advice, and it is not an assurance that any fact is current on the day you read it. Confirm anything you intend to act on with the institution itself. To report an error, see Corrections.