Morningstar Launches Wealth Management Solutions Group to Connect Capabilities for Advisors

New business unit, fortified with newly hired executives, unites capabilities across Morningstar

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Feb 03, 2022, 10:00 ET

CHICAGO, Feb. 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Morningstar, Inc. (Nasdaq: MORN), a leading provider of independent investment research, today announced the creation of a new business unit focused on the wealth management segment.

Effective Jan. 1, 2022, the new Wealth Management Solutions group unites capabilities across Morningstar's business, including managed portfolios from Morningstar's Investment Management group, portfolio management software Morningstar Office^sm, investment data aggregator ByAllAccounts^®, and the individual investor experience across Morningstar.com^®. The U.K. and international business from Praemium, for which Morningstar announced acquisition plans in December and awaits regulatory approval, would also sit among this group.

Daniel Needham has been appointed president of the business, expanding on his prior role overseeing Morningstar's Investment Management group as president and chief investment officer since 2015.

"As part of our mission to empower investor success, we have big ambitions to build on the success of the offerings we have today while connecting them together toward a comprehensive wealth management platform. We have recently added an impressive roster of industry leaders to our Wealth Management Solutions leadership team to do just that," said Needham. "We can free up advisors' time by making the workflow seamless and bringing freedom of investment choice, so advisors can do what they do best: serve their clients."

Later this year, Morningstar Investment Services plans to launch a direct indexing capability on its Turnkey Asset Management Platform (TAMP) for advisors, marking the first new product launch for the Wealth Management Solutions team and adding to its existing product lineup.

The wealth solutions group's leadership team has been fortified by many recent additions:

Adley Bowden, Head of Individual Investor

Adley was selected as head of the individual investor business for Morningstar in June 2021. He was previously vice president of market development and analysis at PitchBook, where he has held nearly every kind of role – developing products, strategic partnerships, editorial content and thought leadership, research, demand generation programs and brand messaging – since becoming PitchBook's fifth employee in 2008.

Elizabeth Durkee, Head of Marketing, Wealth Management Solutions

Elizabeth joined Morningstar in January 2022 in a newly created role leading marketing across Wealth Management Solutions, including leading the go-to-market strategies, marketing campaigns, and digital customer experience across the group's products and services. Elizabeth most recently served as head of marketing for BNY Mellon Investment Management North America and BNY Mellon Securities Corp. and held previous marketing leadership roles at firms including FS Consulting, Natixis Global Asset Management, and SunGard.

Katy Gibson, Head of Product, ByAllAccounts

Katy joined Morningstar in May 2021 to lead ByAllAccounts, the data aggregation service of more than 16,000 sources built specifically for investment use cases. She previously served as the vice president of product applications at Yodlee/Envestnet since 2012 where she led the company's financial wellness strategy and developed an analytics-driven ecosystem of financial management applications.

John Harris, Head of U.S. Platform Distribution, Investment Management

John joined Morningstar's Investment Management group in October 2021, previously serving as the head of advisor sales and practice solutions at Envestnet since 2002. Reporting to Jonathan Linstra, John leads platform sales and efforts to expand reach and adoption within the advisory landscape.

Jonathan Linstra, Americas Managing Director, Investment Management

Jonathan joined Morningstar's Investment Management group as managing director, Americas in June 2021. He leads all revenue generation and distribution efforts across the Americas, helping advisors move from managing assets to managing wealth across all segments and products. Jonathan has 25 years of innovative and strategic leadership, most recently from State Street Global Advisors in Boston where he held several leadership positions including head of ETF model portfolios and advised solutions.

Jig Patel, Chief Technology Officer, Wealth Management Solutions

Jig joined Morningstar in June 2021 as chief technology officer for Morningstar's Investment Management group. He brings 25 years of experience in insurance, payments, banking, and SaaS, and was mostly recently president and chief operating officer at digital payments platform One Inc. and group chief information officer for digital banking solutions at Fiserv.

Brian Verhoeven, Head of Design, Wealth Management Solutions

Brian joined the Wealth Management Solutions team in October 2021 from his prior role with Morningstar as head of design operations, in which he focused on advancing the design team's impact across the company through customer-centric processes and fostering a design-thinking culture. Brian first joined Morningstar in 2016 as part of HelloWallet and before that held design and user experience roles at Forum One, The Washington Post, and ICF International.

Bjorn Widerstedt, Head of Product, Morningstar Office

Bjorn joined Morningstar in December 2021 as head of product for Morningstar Office. He previously led product strategy and innovation for the Black Diamond Wealth Platform. Bjorn has launched new technology solutions across the wealth management lifecycle for 14 years, helping thousands of advisors grow, improve client relationships, and become operationally efficient.

About Morningstar, Inc.

Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The Company offers an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers and owners, retirement plan providers and sponsors, and institutional investors in the debt and private capital markets. Morningstar provides data and research insights on a wide range of investment offerings, including managed investment products, publicly listed companies, private capital markets, debt securities, and real-time global market data. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiaries, with approximately $260 billion in assets under advisement and management as of Sept. 30, 2021. The Company has operations in 29 countries. For more information, visit www.morningstar.com/company. Follow Morningstar on Twitter @MorningstarInc.

About Morningstar's Investment Management group

Morningstar's Investment Management group is a leading provider of discretionary investment management and advisory services. Guided by seven investment principles, the group is committed to focusing on its mission to design portfolios that help investors reach their financial goals. The group's global investment management team works as one to apply a disciplined investment process to its strategies and portfolios, bringing together core capabilities in asset allocation, investment selection, and portfolio construction. This robust process integrates proprietary research and leading investment techniques. As of Sept. 30, 2021, Morningstar's Investment Management group was responsible for approximately $260 billion* in assets under advisement and management across North America, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific.

In addition to advisory services, the group's investment professionals build and manage model portfolios for financial advisors in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, and India to create strategies that incorporate a wide variety of investment objectives.

*Includes assets under management and advisement for Morningstar Investment Management LLC, Morningstar Investment Services LLC, Morningstar Investment Management Europe Ltd., Morningstar Investment Management Australia Ltd., Ibbotson Associates Japan, Inc., Morningstar Investment Management South Africa (PTY) LTD, Morningstar Investment Adviser India Private Limited, and Morningstar Associates Inc. all of which are subsidiaries of Morningstar, Inc. Advisory services listed are provided by one or more of these entities, which are authorized in the appropriate jurisdiction to provide such services.

Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements as that term is used in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on our current expectations about future events or future financial performance. Forward-looking statements by their nature address matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain, and often contain words such as "may," "could," "expect," "intend," "plan," "seek," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," or "continue." These statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause the events we discuss not to occur or to differ significantly from what we expect. For us, these risks and uncertainties include, among others, failing to maintain and protect our brand, independence, and reputation; liability for any losses that result from an actual or claimed breach of our fiduciary duties or failure to comply with applicable securities laws; liability related to cybersecurity and the protection of confidential information, including personal information about individuals; compliance failures, regulatory action, or changes in laws applicable to our credit ratings operations, or our investment advisory, ESG, and index products; prolonged volatility or downturns affecting the financial sector, global financial markets, and global economy and its effect on our revenue from asset-based fees and credit ratings business; the impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic and government actions in response thereto on our business, financial condition, and results of operations; inadequacy of our operational risk management and business continuity programs in the event of a material disruptive event; failing to respond to technological change, keep pace with new technology developments, or adopt a successful technology strategy; failing to differentiate our products and services and continuously create innovative, proprietary and insightful financial technology solutions; liability relating to the information and data we collect, store, use, create, and distribute or the reports that we publish or are produced by our software products; trends in the financial services industry, including fee compression within the asset and wealth management sectors and increased industry consolidation; an outage of our database, technology-based products and services, or network facilities or the movement of parts of our technology and data infrastructure to the public cloud and other outsourced providers; the failure of acquisitions and other investments to be efficiently integrated and produce the results we anticipate; the failure to recruit, develop, and retain qualified employees; challenges faced by our non-U.S. operations, including the concentration of data and development work at our offshore facilities in China and India; our indebtedness could adversely affect our cash flows and financial flexibility; and the failure to protect our intellectual property rights or claims of intellectual property infringement against us. A more complete description of these risks and uncertainties can be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K. If any of these risks and uncertainties materialize, our actual future results and other future events may vary significantly from what we expect. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events.

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SOURCE Morningstar, Inc.