Mercer, a global consulting company, specializing in advancing health, wealth and career, and a wholly owned subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies (NYSE: MMC), and Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ: MORN), the provider of independent investment research, have just announced an alliance to provide investors and advisors with a single global digital platform for institutional investment manager data, performance analytics and qualitative research.
The new alliance pairs Mercer’s broad global institutional manager data and research with Morningstar’s independent research and data spanning open-end mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, separately managed accounts, and indexes.
Investors and their advisors do not have comprehensive resources for institutional strategies research and data. Working together with Morningstar, we can give investors and their advisors an extensive and deep view of their opportunity set and costs, empowering them to make better, overall investing decisions,” said Rich Nuzum, Global President, Mercer’s wealth business. “We chose to collaborate with Morningstar because they understand the changing landscape of financial advisors’ needs. Through this alliance with Morningstar, we will bring a new level of transparency and insight to the industry and enable advisors and wealth managers to deliver holistic solutions to their clients.
Mercer and Morningstar’s collective business intelligence and intellectual capital represents a robust source of global investment manager data, performance analytics, qualitative research, strategic research, information on investor trends, and artificial intelligence applied to fund data.
Morningstar has a 35-year history of serving financial professionals in the pursuit of delivering the best possible outcomes for investors. We’ve seen how asset management firms, investment consultants, and wealth managers have struggled to find a comprehensive, forward-looking, qualitative research solution at the strategy and share-class level,” said Tricia Rothschild, Chief Product Officer, Morningstar. “We selected Mercer for this venture to close that gap by developing a global solution that will help advisors, asset managers, and investment consultants focus decision-making and create new investment options for the end investor, driving stronger outcomes.
Institutional consultants and investors, asset managers, and financial advisors will be able to access this new global data and research offering through Morningstar Direct℠ . Mercer and Morningstar will be mapping research and data on institutional strategies held within MercerInsight to Morningstar Direct, creating a seamless link amongst strategy, vehicle data and analytics. The new offering will be rolled out by region, beginning in early 2019 in the United States.