Our Methodology

1. Data Sources

Product information is gathered from multiple public and direct sources:

• Provider websites — Official product pages, terms of service, fee schedules, and application requirements.
• Public disclosures — Regulatory filings (securities regulators, CDIC, provincial banking regulators), prospectuses, and annual reports.
• First-party provider verification — Our secure provider portal, where providers submit structured product data, attest that their listing is accurate, and propose corrections. Every submission and change request is reviewed by our team before publication — nothing a provider enters goes live automatically.
• Provider communications — Direct email correspondence, press releases, and customer service confirmations.
• Shariah documentation — Published fatwas, Shariah board composition disclosures, AAOIFI compliance statements, and certification documents.
• Industry publications — Reports from AAOIFI, IFSB (Islamic Financial Services Board), and other recognized Islamic finance bodies.

We do not accept self-reported data at face value. All provider-submitted information — including portal submissions — is cross-referenced against publicly available documentation and editorially reviewed before publication. Where a provider has confirmed a fact through the portal, it is labeled “provider-verified” and carries a verification date.

2. What We Track for Each Product

For every product in our database, we store and display structured attributes including:

• Category — Home financing, auto financing, business financing, bank accounts, investing, retirement, or estate planning.
• Product structure — The Islamic finance contract type (Musharakah, Murabaha, Ijara, Wakalah, etc.).
• Province availability — Which provinces the product is offered in, verified against provider licensing and disclosures.
• Provider details — Name, founding year, website, headquarters, and available contact channels.
• Shariah oversight type — Classified as Formal Board, Third-Party Certified, Named Scholar, or No Public Review (explained below).
• Key features — Minimum down payment, credit requirements, account types, investment options, and other distinguishing characteristics.

3. Verification Process

Before any product is published or updated, we follow a multi-step verification process:

1. Primary source check — We confirm every claim against the provider's own published materials.
2. Consistency validation — We run automated checks to identify anomalies in state coverage, product categorization, and attribute completeness.
3. Manual review — Flagged anomalies are reviewed by a team member before changes are published.
4. Provider attestation on a 30-day cycle — Through our secure provider portal, providers review their own listing and either confirm it is accurate or request specific corrections. We prompt every provider by email to re-confirm their data every 30 days; data left unconfirmed loses verified-data credit in the Halal Money Index until it is re-verified, so staying current is in the provider's own interest. Confirmations stamp the record's verification date; requested changes are never applied automatically — each one is reviewed and approved by our team first.
5. Timestamp tracking — We record the date each product record was last verified so users and AI systems can assess data freshness.

If a provider changes terms, coverage, or product structure, we update records as soon as we identify the change. For high-impact changes (state availability, pricing, or Shariah oversight status), updates are prioritized within 48 hours.

4. Shariah Oversight Classification

For every provider, we summarize the publicly available Shariah governance documentation into a standardized label. This helps users quickly assess the level of documented religious oversight:

• Formal Board — The provider discloses an internal or external Shariah supervisory board that reviews and certifies products on an ongoing basis. This is the strongest level of documented oversight.
• Third-Party Certified — The provider references third-party scholarly review or certification from recognized Islamic finance bodies (e.g., AAOIFI, AMJA).
• Named Scholar — The provider discloses named scholar involvement and specific methodology documentation but does not maintain a formal board.
• No Public Review — No publicly available Shariah board, certification, or named scholar documentation was found at the time of review.
• Not Applicable — The organization is not a consumer financial product provider (e.g., screening tools, educational platforms).

Important: These labels are informational. HalalWallet does not issue religious rulings, certify products as halal, or serve as a Shariah authority. Our role is the record, not the ruling: we compile the most complete public account of what Shariah scholars, screening authorities, and mainstream standards say — reproduced from primary sources with dates and citations — and let you decide. We encourage all users to verify details directly with providers and consult qualified scholars for faith-specific determinations.

5. How Comparisons Are Presented

Our comparison tables allow users to filter and sort products by category, state, provider, financing structure, and Shariah oversight type. The default display order is not a ranking of quality — it is based on data completeness and availability.

Referral relationships with providers are tracked using our internal analytics for invoicing and transparency, including deduplication and filtering of automated or non-human traffic where applicable.

“Featured” labels indicate a commercial relationship and may control priority in designated, labeled modules (for example, Top Picks on a hub). They do not change the underlying product fields we display, and we do not remove non-paying providers from the database. In interactive tables, your selected sort and filters apply.

Home-financing carve-out. On home-financing hub pages, state pages, and top-provider modules, paid Featured status does not determine ranking or order. Those surfaces are ordered by methodology factors (Shariah oversight, state availability, structure, rating, data completeness). The Featured badge, when present, signals a commercial relationship for transparency only—it does not move position. See How We Make Money and Disclosures.

6. Update Cadence

We maintain a quarterly review cycle for all product data. During each review, we:

• Re-verify state availability and product terms.
• Check for new providers entering the Canadian halal finance market.
• Update Shariah oversight labels if governance documentation has changed.
• Review and refresh educational content (guides, blog articles, glossary).

Between quarterly reviews, we make ad-hoc updates when we identify material changes — such as a provider launching in new states, changing their product structure, or updating their Shariah board composition.

7. Where Our Job Ends and Yours Begins

HalalWallet does roughly 90% of the homework — the comparisons, the contract structures, the oversight classifications, and the trade-offs — so that your final checks are quick and personal. The remaining 10% is deliberately left to you and your scholar, because it depends on facts only you have. These boundaries are designed safeguards, not gaps:

• We classify only what providers document. Our Shariah oversight labels are based on verifiable documentation — published materials or evidence a provider puts on the record through our verification portal — never on informal assurances. A provider may have strong internal governance that is not yet documented; until it is, we will not claim it on their behalf.
• We track terms; the provider's quote is final. Rates, fees, and minimums change frequently. We update data on a quarterly review cycle (with ad-hoc updates in between) and show verification dates where available — and the last step of every comparison is confirming current terms directly with the provider before you commit.
• We inform scholarly discussion; we don't replace it. Islamic finance jurisprudence involves genuine differences of opinion — a product considered compliant by one school of thought may not be by another. We present each provider's structure and oversight so your scholar conversation starts at your decision, not at the basics. We deliberately do not adjudicate between schools.
• We expand coverage continuously and say so. Not every halal financial product in Canada is in our database yet. When a product is missing, we would rather show a verified smaller set than pad the list — and we add providers as their documentation is verified.

8. Questions or Feedback

If you have questions about our methodology, notice an error, or want to suggest a provider for inclusion, please contact us. We take corrections seriously and prioritize accuracy above all else.