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Morningstar to roll out data for a host of clients

Morningstar Inc. has launched a tool that enables institutional clients to monitor fund asset flow and market share data.

The service is available to clients of the Chicago-fund tracker on its research platform, Morningstar Direct.

The data will include data from U.S. mutual funds, money market funds and ETFs, as well as European funds, offshore funds and Japanese mutual funds.

The data will be timely and comprehensive and will help firms stay competitive, said Sylvester Flood, a product manager at Morningstar.

“Flow data is going to be available to them sooner than they were before, so especially in these turbulent times, you can know sooner where the money is going,” he said.

Clients can analyze the data by fund group, asset class, fund or fund class.

Later this year, the firm plans to add flow data for domestic variable annuities and separate accounts, Australian investment trusts and global hedge funds. It will also offer monthly trend data from the Washington-based Investment Company Institute.

For clients of registered investment advisers, Morningstar also plans this summer to begin releasing a monthly report in the PDF format that will summarize fund flow activity in the U.S. market.

The report will be made available to adviser clients on the firm’s Adviser Workstation Office.

“The report will publish flows and assets under management by fund family,” Mr. Flood said.

“Advisers are interested in this data, especially as they are looking out for time bombs with funds that are having a lot of redemptions,” he said. “Advisers want to know when those conditions are going to percolate.”

Last year, Morningstar invested $105.4 million in six acquisitions, including four outside of the United States, to expand its coverage of global investments, including stock coverage and mutual funds.