Morningstar’s Rothschild On Empowering Advisors Through Data

Tricia Rothschild, Chief Product Officer, Morningstar met with Julie Cooling, Founder & CEO, RIA Channel at the 2018 Fearless in Fintech conference to discuss how advisors can distinguish themselves with data. In an increasingly competitive environment, advisors are feeling the pressure to add value and differentiate their offerings. Morningstar has met this growing challenge with what Rothschild calls, “doubling down on data.” In addition to examining and improving current data sets, Morningstar recently announced a partnership with Mercer. The move will bring institutional level data into the retail/wealth space. A big emphasis for the Morningstar platform, is helping advisors address what’s most important to investors. For example, the risk modeling capability on Morningstar Direct allows advisors to show clients, in real time, their level of a specific risk exposure. “Within ten minutes, an advisor can run the scenario and have a talking point,” says Rothschild. Ultimately, the platform aims to empower advisors through quick access to relevant data. Morningstar Office, an end-to-end cloud-based version of the platform, offers advisors billing, accounting, and reporting capabilities.