Morningstar Wealth has added third-party portfolios from Blackrock, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, and Clark Capital to its U.S. Wealth Platform. They are the first outside portfolios the company has made available to advisors.
The move is part of the company’s long-term goal to streamline Morningstar’s wealth services and combine capabilities on one platform.
The third-party portfolios went through a rigorous due diligence process, according to Daniel Needham, Morning Star Wealth’s president. He said the new strategies offer mix of ETFs and mutual funds that complement current strategies built by Morningstar that are already offered on the platform.
Third-party portfolio minimums on the platform range between $5,000 and $30,000, depending on the portfolio. This is lower than the minimum amount for Morningstar’s direct indexing offering, which debuted on the platform last November and has a $150,000 minimum investment for core focused portfolios.
And more managers and portfolio offerings are on the way, said Needham.
“This is a curated offering,” Needham said. “We want to make sure that we’re delivering a list that we think is compelling and helpful to advisors, but we also don’t want choice overload. People come to Morningstar because they appreciate our research and our ability to help them sort of filter the universe.”
Morningstar Wealth was created in 2022 as a way for the company to house multiple Morningstar offerings built for advisors under one roof. The brand now houses an investment management business, a portfolio management software business, and individual businesses like morningstar.com and a subscription service. Between the platform, investment strategies, and retirement offerings, the company has about $246 billion assets under management and advisement.
Future steps for Morningstar Wealth include combing the company’s turnkey asset management platform, third-party proprietary strategies, and direct indexing capability with Morningstar’s portfolio accounting service to create an all-in-one, end-to-end platform built for advisors.
“We haven’t done that yet,” Needham said. “That’s kind of a work in progress but it’s really exciting to be building that.”
The company is focused on providing as much choice and flexibility to advisors as possible, Needham added. “If we can deliver a platform that allows an advisor to run their practice, having seamless workflows, giving them a lot of choice, then advisors can do what they do best which is spend time with their clients,” he said.
