Get insights into the Best Broker Awards 2021

I’ve always wondered how medals were made. I mean, when I’m at a sports event the only thing I'm cheering for are my favourite athletes so that they’ll receive their gold/silver/bronze medals soon enough. In such a case, awards seem to be a minor, representative part of the ceremony. The highlights are always the sporting achievements, right? 

 

It’s sometimes refreshing to think about how the surroundings got together, you know like how the Olympic Flame can stay lit in harsh conditions 24/7 or how much the fireworks cost. For funzies - and because we now have a dedicated sweet spot for blog posts - we thought we would give you some insight into how we crafted our “medals,” a.k.a. the BrokerChooser Awards of 2021. Come, join us! 

 

 

What is award creation about?

2021 will see the Tokyo Olympics (hopefully), so we went ahead with the celebration and created our own international award ceremony. With our methodology-based approach BrokerChooser announces the Best Brokers in 20+ categories every year. This includes the Best Stockbroker of 2021, the Best Forex Broker of 2021, and so on. To achieve such a thing, we decided to keep all our content up-to-date throughout the year. We started in early Summer, and we hit a big milestone at the end of Autumn. Crazy amount of work, right? 

Well yes, but with a good team, no work feels like work. After a long period of re-working our reviews, our content team gathered to discuss how we approach our best lists. It involved weeks of constant meetings - discussions, arguments and all-day talks. We decided not to go the easy way, but the proper one. We discussed every last detail thoroughly they should be.

 

How did it all begin?

The first and one of the most difficult steps were to prepare an update schedule: we had to update 70+ brokers and a list of articles throughout 2020. Bence, Ádám, and Gergő met regularly during March and April to work out a plan for this huge work. The sessions seemed to be endless, as we had to calculate capacity, the update priority of content, and the workflow method between our updater teams.

 

What has changed since last year? 

Undoubtedly, the biggest change was that we created a system to update our content continuously all over the year. In previous years, we dedicated October and November just for updates, with the whole team included.

 

We also changed our workflow in order to increase both the quality and speed of creation content. Now, we have three phases involving 3 people to update any content: 

 

1.  First, one checks if the data is still relevant and adjusts updates in the articles. This step is dedicated to analyst updaters.
2.  Second, a person checks if the adjustments are correct, with validating all broker data points. We call them analyst checkers.
3.  And lastly as a third step, a colleague reads the article over focusing on language and style so that the article is easy to understand, and the grammar is correct. This phase is our Editor Team’s job.

 

“One more thing!” One of our biggest achievements in 2020 was that we developed an automated data capture tool that helps us to gather structured data easily, fully automatic. We did our first (automatic) baby steps in collecting fee data and it was quite delightful that it worked successfully. 

 

What were the most memorable moments? 

In BrokerChooser fashion, despite having lots to work on, we always have fun in the meantime. I mean, life in general is all about having fun while bettering ourselves. To completely get behind this idea, we try to make our co-works as memorable as we can. We had outings, where we moved away from our home offices to a remote location just to focus on ourselves and our job to deliver the best brokers out there. And when it comes to work itself, we get deep. It was amazing that we had the chance to get comfy in our virtual armchairs and to talk days about brokers and their services. This approach - that reflected a debate more - helped us to fine tune our choices for the Best Brokers of 2021.

 

Quotes

Bence: ”Sometimes I felt like I couldn’t say more or better after our debates with my colleagues. It’s insane how much they see on the markets. This one’s a strong team indeed, I’m already excited about what we’ll come up next.’”

 

Ádám:"I really enjoy the updates as I always realize how complex and moving the industry we’re specialized in. It was a lot of effort and work, but after seeing the results, I’m really happy and proud of our team. I’m sure that these efforts will pay off and will help a lot to our customers when they select their best brokers."

 

The Best Brokers for 2021 will be revealed soon. In the meantime, here is our shortlist!