Scoring methodology

Health insurance: six weighted axes and an overall score

Every plan (24 plans from 11 insurers) receives a 0 to 10 score on six axes. The overall score is the weighted sum of the six; that makes seven values per plan and all of them are shown in the comparison.

1. 1

   Price-Value Ratio

   25%

   We compare the monthly premium against actual coverage scope. A $200/mo plan with $3.5M coverage and dental scores higher than a $200/mo plan with $1M and no dental.

2. 2

   Coverage Breadth

   25%

   We evaluate: annual limit, geographic coverage, dental, vision, maternity, mental health, preventive care, chronic conditions, evacuation, and repatriation.

3. 3

   Flexibility

   20%

   Free choice of doctor, territorial coverage (local vs. global), USA access, and maximum entry age.

4. 4

   Claims Process

   15%

   Direct payment vs. reimbursement, average reimbursement time, documentation required, user-reported experiences.

5. 5

   Digital Experience

   10%

   Mobile app, online portal, integrated telemedicine, digital onboarding process.

6. 6

   Transparency

   5%

   Clarity of terms, documented exclusions, price increase history, proactive communication.

Data sources

• Official price lists of each insurer and direct quotes by age (verified at least every six months).
• Policy wordings, exclusions and age limits published by each insurer.
• Superintendencia de Seguros y Reaseguros de Panamá (SSRP): register and market statistics.
• User experiences in forums and groups, only as a signal for the claims axis, never as a price.

Brokers: regulation first, costs second

Nine brokers that accept Panama residents. The 0 to 10 score is built from five criteria; a broker without a verifiable licence is excluded from the comparison, whatever its price.

• Regulation and jurisdiction

  Licence confirmed in the regulator's register (SEC, FCA, CySEC, ASIC, BaFin) and client protection in case of insolvency.

• Total costs

  Commission per trade, typical EUR/USD spread, custody, inactivity and the cost of depositing and withdrawing from Panama.

• Withholding tax

  Treatment of US dividend withholding and how easy it is to file the W-8BEN.

• Deposit and platform

  Minimum deposit, methods available from Panamanian banks, app quality and tools.

• Products and leverage

  Stocks, ETFs, options, crypto; leverage limits and negative balance protection.

Every broker button goes through /go/<broker>, which resolves to the partner link if one exists or to the official website otherwise. Each profile shows its last-verified date.

Data sources

• Public registers of the regulators listed.
• Official fee schedules of each broker, captured with date.
• Broker tax documentation on withholding and forms.

Banks: real rates, not promotional ones

Fifteen banks with savings accounts and credit cards. We do not score banks; we rank products by the criterion that matters (effective annual rate, total card cost) and show the conditions that change the result.

• Savings accounts

  Published effective annual rate, minimum balance to obtain it, availability (instant or term) and maintenance fees.

• Credit cards

  Cashback or miles per dollar, annual fee, interest rate and income requirements, with the net cost for typical spending.

• Licence

  Only banks with a valid general or microfinance licence at the Superintendencia de Bancos de Panamá.

• Updates

  Monthly rate review; every row shows its last-verified date.

Data sources

• Superintendencia de Bancos de Panamá (SBP): published rates and licences.
• ACODECO: consumer terms and fees of financial products.
• Fee schedules and product pages of each bank, captured with date.

Fuel: the SNE notice, read and verified

The National Energy Secretariat publishes maximum prices by zone every period (usually every two weeks), almost always as an image. This is how we turn it into data:

1. 1

   Capture the notice

   We download the official SNE publication as soon as it appears, with its date and validity period.

2. 2

   Automatic reading

   A vision model extracts the prices from the image (95, 91, diesel, by zone) on our own server, without external services.

3. 3

   Plausibility checks

   Fixed rules: maximum change per period, 91/95 ratio, consistency across zones. Any deviation blocks publication.

4. 4

   Manual approval

   A member of the editorial team compares the extracted values with the image before publishing. Nothing goes out without that step.

5. 5

   Publication

   The page shows the current price, the previous one, the change and the date of the notice as source.

Data sources

• Secretaría Nacional de Energía (SNE): official notice of maximum prices by zone.
• U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA): weekly Gulf Coast price of regular, premium and ULSD.
• Our own archive of notices since 2025 for model calibration.