Product Watch: Morningstar ramps up variable-annuity database

Morningstar Inc. in Chicago has significantly enhanced its proprietary variable-annuity data, creating a large, comprehensive annuity data store. The Morningstar database now includes full coverage of 975 variable-life policies, 30,500 subaccounts, 2,800 underlying insurance funds and a complete collection of variable-trust and underlying funds.

With the additional underlying-funds information – and Morningstar’s proprietary measurements, such as the Morningstar Rating and Morningstar Style Box – asset managers can better compare funds for competitive research and product development, and financial advisers can research funds to assemble better client portfolios.

Morningstar has enhanced its database to include tools advisers and institutional investors need to conduct in-depth research and weigh variable annuities against other investment products, such as individual stocks, mutual funds and separate accounts.

With the new variable-annuity database, investors and financial advisers can measure information on variable-annuity underlying funds against that of open-end mutual funds to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison, and isolate performance information on variable-annuity subaccounts and variable-annuity funds from fees and insurance expenses to conduct the most-thorough analysis.

The data will be updated monthly and rolled out this summer through the following products: Morningstar DataLab, a web-based investment research platform for institutions; and Morningstar Principia, an investment software system that features a series of six modules that provide timely data on more than 15,000 mutual fund share classes, 2,600 separate accounts, 7,000 stocks, 500 closed-end funds and 30,500 variable-annuity/variable-life subaccounts.

Also, Morningstar Advisor Workstation, an online investment planning system that enables advisers to create customized hypothetical reports for any combination of variable annuities, separate accounts and funds; and Investment Profiles, which are one-page summary reports – for both subaccounts and underlying funds – that present key performance and portfolio information for investment professionals to use with clients.

Software to keep the lawyers away

* Tuscon, Ariz.-based dailyVest Inc., a provider of investment personalization and performance measurement technology for account access websites, offers software designed to minimize the likelihood of participant class actions through continuous reporting of investment demographics at the plan level and personal investment analysis at the participant level.

This software tool provides continuous analysis and reporting of personal investment performance and allocation of accounts, especially to company stock. It integrates dailyVest’s Plan Sponsor Analytics Platform and Investment Personalization Platform.

Lincoln advisers get optimization tool

* New Frontier Advisors LLC in Boston has incorporated portfolio optimization and balancing technology into a new wealth management platform introduced by Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp. in Fort Wayne, Ind. Sagemark Consulting, an Irvine, Calif.-based division of Lincoln Financial, will also employ the New Frontier technology.

New Frontier offers additional financial planning tools as part of the NFA Desktop Suite, which is available either as a stand-alone application or as a component in an in-house or third-party application.

Working with their clients, advisers can use the New Frontier technology to input assumptions and forecasts, and then determine the optimal portfolio to meet specific investment needs and objectives, such as retirement and college expense planning.

The calculation engine helps assess risk in simple, concrete terms, and guides the adviser in selecting the portfolio on the efficient frontier that is most suitable to the client’s particular long- term financial goal.