225 Morningstar Direct Advisory Suite (formerly Advisor Workstation) Reviews
I have been using Morningstar since their information was available on floppy disks. The information has gotten better and better. Analyst ratings have helped me take business from other Advisors who have chosen negative or neutral analyst reviews. People like to know that their advisor is putting them in well-rated investments.
Customer service is excellent. They have helped me manage custom sorts and reports.
I use it every day, multiple times during the day. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
My only issue is with the drop down menus. The subcategories are in no particular order. Would be nice if they were in alphabetical order. This is an issue since I have been using the product and it has only gotten worse as more information has been added. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I like the granular detail that is available in Morningstar. The tools available to search based on a given set of criteria is excellent. I use it almost every single day. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The fees. I feel that the $186.75 being charged to each advisor / LPL branch is excessive. With over 29,000 LPL advisors it seems that my firm would or at least should be offered much more favorable rates. My questions is, how much is Edward Jones paying for each of their 20,000 advisors. I worked there for 7 years and one thing that I learned is that they negotiate their suppliers down to the bare bones. If you were to ask me what a fair subscription rate would be, my answer would be about 50% of the current rate, or $95. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Customer Support.
Integration -- Link to my client data base at Raymond James.
Number of Features. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
You do NOT take "Information Ratio" into account within your metrics.
Not very intuitive to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I have used Morningstar Advisor Workstation for several years now and it has been very helpful in my advisory practice. Advisor workstation has so many features but the ones I use most are the hypothetical illustrations to review prospects portfolios and the portfolio reports to generate reports for current client. The hypothetical & portfolio reports give you so much data in a clear and concise format that is easy to present to clients. There is also great research on mutual funds that I frequently utilize. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
One of the only downsides I have found to advisor access is within the hypothetical illustrations, they only allow 40 positions. This is typically enough but on occasion I run into prospects with more than 40 holdings and I will have to use proxies for small holdings. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
One of the biggest upsides of using Morningstar Advisor Workstation is the breadth of information that can be found on the platform. Morningstar always provides the data that our firm is looking for whether it is information on the holdings of a mutual fund, a client's portfolio risk score, or historical returns on a security. There are also a lot of ways to customize the way that you find and sort data. Our firm has been able to create custom views in order to display the information that we feel is most relevant when running searches which saves us time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Something that has been challenging for our firm when using Morningstar Advisor Workstation is it has been difficult to get a hold of the customer service/support team when we have a question or issue. Occasionally it takes several email/phone call reminders to them before we hear back from a member of the team. They do provide great informational webinars and other training resources that is helpful, but when an issue arises that has no outstanding solution it can be challenging to reach a team member. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Morningstar provides a great deal of good information for back testing portfolios and ideas. I feel their hypothetical scenario builder is their best feature which allows me to build client portfolios and then back test them for as far back as data is available. I love the integration of the modern portfolio theory statics into portfolios extending 3 years and beyond as a way of gauging alpha and beta on portfolios. I also like their Portfolio X-Ray feature that tells me how concentrated client portfolios are in any one security across the holdings of that portfolio. Its current integration into the LPL system universe is an added bonus. I use the platform multiple times a week and extensively during macro portfolio reviews. The ability to have access to Morningstar analyst reports also represents a nice feature as well! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Sometimes the workstation navigation can be a bit "clunky" and though I love its hypothetical report builder, it lacks some deeper ratios such as information ratio, sortino ratio, etc that other software tools provide. Additionally, changing investments or investment percentages can be a bit cumbersome due to the amount of steps involved. Additionally, while Morningstar has investment data for many years back, most reports only limit you to 1, 3, 5, or 10 year information. Sometimes, I would like to see how the fund performed in the 2000 stock crash, etc... Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The content is top notch. The information available is very valuable and useful in my day to day operation Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The best potential feature for me in my use case is to import statements through the mobile app by picture. The potential time savings here is huge. With that said the feature is hit or miss and doesn't always work as advertised, often missing positions. I also find that the search functionality in the research tab can be hard to use. Model portfolios or investments I am analyzing through Envestnet may have slightly different names across platforms (Blackrock 90/10 ETF Model Portfolio in Envestnet, same portfolio in Morningstar is Blackrock MP 90/10 ETF). Incorporating a search function that would allow a user to search pieces of the title without getting it exactly right would be helpful (allowing me to search using quotation marks for title for example "Blackrock"&"90/10" or "Blackrock","90/10") Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The most helpful is the ease in which I can pull together investment information. The research is exactly what I need as an advisor. I think it provides good information with proposals as well. It is a good piece of my value add to customers. I use it often. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I think some of the setting up of proposals can be clunky at times. I don't like how I cannot print a summary for a client and I have to do each account. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Quality of data and the huge universe of holdings. Morningstar is well known to many individual investors who have developed a great deal of trust in the brand. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Some of the menu functions, particularly in research are inconvenient; seems to me that one should be able to search for any investment, without having to go thru the additional step of separating the universe into either funds or etfs. The data sets for SD and correlations offer only 3 and 10 year information. Correlations, SD, Beta and Alpha are much more fluid and a shorter timeframe offers some better insight for those who are more tactical in their approach. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The breadth of the funds/stocks/etf's, etc. that are reviewed. It is nice to compare similar issues. The data sheets on individual funds are well stuctured and easy to understand. Most of the hypotheticalo portfolio information (such as the stock intersection and the risk/reward scatterplots) are very useful in helping construct the most appropriate portfolios for a given client. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The over-abundance of disclosures, the constant presentations of "here's an example of how the world can end" and "here's how much it would cost you if you got charged an unrealistic, irrelevant amount". Customer support and account executives are EXTREMELY difficult to contact. In a typical mutual fund-only hypothetical the disclosures will be at least fifty pages. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
