The Ascent's Best-Of 2020 Awards
Our picks of the best financial products of the year
The 2020 award winners were determined by The Ascent’s editorial team, which consists of 15 personal finance experts with over 10,000 published bylines.
Nominees were first chosen for a given award using The Ascent’s proprietary ratings models that analyze and score hundreds of financial products available in the market based on their feature sets.
The Ascent’s panel of experts then voted to identify each award winner via a points allocation voting process. In the case of banks and credit card offers alone, over 1,440 total data points were assessed.
As a final check point, all nominees had to pass our Golden Rule test: Would you recommend this financial product to a family member or close friend?
Here are The Ascent’s Best-Of 2020 award winners:
What are The Ascent’s Best-Of 2020 Awards?
The Ascent’s Best-of 2020 Awards honor the past year's top financial products and services. Our award winners represent our opinion of the single, best product or service in a specific category, such as the top travel card with no annual fee or the leading bank for customer service, among many other award categories.
But it’s important to realize that no single award winner is a fit for everyone. We’re lucky to have an expansive marketplace of high-quality finance offerings to choose from, for every need under the sun.
Which is why our separate best-of lists - that are updated on a monthly basis - include not only awards winners but also a deeper lineup of top offerings in the market. The common threads that these offers share is they’re all fully-vetted picks for a specific need and we’re comfortable recommending them to our closest friends and family members.
All said, we think our awards winners are great options for most people, but it’s always worthwhile comparing any award winner to a group of similar offers to find the one that suits you best.
You can find more top picks by visiting our best-of lists below:
Who determines the winners?
The Ascent’s team of experts votes on the final awards winners. The team is comprised of 15 industry experts, editorial strategists, and writers with deep experience across credit cards, banks and banking products, investments, loans, mortgages, and more personal finance topics.
- Matt Frankel, CFP
- Maurie Backman
- Christy Bieber
- Lyle Daly
- Kimberly Rotter
- Elizabeth Aldrich
- Kailey Hagen
- Kevin Payne
- Emma Newbery
- Nathan Hamilton
- James Heflin
- Jamie Matthews
- Jake FitzGerald
- Bryan Wynkoop
- Cait Cerra
We're firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers. The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.