Morningstar is one of the best known brands in the investment community for its long-running system of collating and comparing mutual funds, ETFs and now model-only strategies.
However, the company's ability to push these strategies directly to advisors for application to client portfolios has remained a secret weapon until recently.
After all, Morningstar Investment Management, also known as Morningstar Managed Portfolios, is nominally a separate enterprise from the established fund review firm.
Similar methodologies and expertise are in place on both sides. But evidently the model delivery unit's technology impresses Wealth Advisor readers.
We polled our audience on their favorite TAMP and Morningstar came in No. 1 this year . . . a significant upset when you consider that AssetMark and Orion ranked just below it.
Those entrenched market leaders don't need to worry. They're great at what they do. But now that Morningstar is powered by SMArtX systems, the landscape is changing fast.
To quote the press release, SMArtX's industry leading, cloud-native, API-first managed account technology will support Morningstar Investment Management's integrated advisor solution for seamlessly managing client assets, including intra-day portfolio and performance pricing, click-to-allocate functionality, automated trading and rebalancing, exclusions/substitutions, cash management, and tax harvesting tools. The solution streamlines day-to-day tasks for opening, managing, and monitoring client accounts.
SMArtX's flexible solution provides Morningstar Investment Management with an engine to help grow its TAMP business by consolidating its vast subject matter expertise into a modern platform fit for today's managed accounts industry.
And that was only a few months ago. As the integration continues to evolve, I suspect Morningstar will widen its currently narrow lead.
On the other hand, its rivals can still catch up or pivot into areas of the financial technology space that interest them more. But now the heat is on.
