221 Morningstar Direct Reviews
Overall Review Sentiment for Morningstar Direct
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I do enjoy using morningstar when I have a burning question or am constructing investment portfolios. I appreciate that the insights available are vast and there are loads of information available to me. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
As simple as it is, I hate that it always asks me to verify my cell # when I log in. I don't know if that is a feature I can turn off (or how) or just part of the security reasons, but it is a really annoying part of the user interface.
I also don't remember if the desktop version of MS was discontinued, or if MS did discontinue it and then brought it back. I honestly haven't really logged in much since (and I know it's bad, it was pre-pandemic) because I found all the back and forth to be annoying. I found that the desktop version was helpful but remember there were decisions by MS to eliminate desktop and go to web/cloud version.
My firm is also clients of sustainalytics, so it would be helpful if that data could just be integrated into MS' platform as oppsoed to having to sign into global access separately. Now that the two firms are one, I would think that ESG data for certain asset classes (i.e. fixed income) would have been more advanced. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
We use Mornigstar to get fund data and run reports for our clients. I love that we have flexibility to adjust our reports and save them, which makes it easy to re-run when needed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I would like to see more asset classes (ex for Mortgage-Backed funds or broad Structured Credit, which are currently grouped in the Interm Govt category).
Also, sometimes Presentation Studio stops showing the fund performance, even though it has th etrack record. And after some adjustments to the time, the link breaks. Re-opening the report, or re-starting Morningstar helps in most cases. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
It's the best vehicle overall at covering the needs of a due diligence team. Be it pulling performance data, observing manager drift though their various tools, or presneting one-pagers for marketing, the team has everything that you need. The tools they have for most searches is beyond par, and the easy export features allow for the team to make easy edits as needed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The validity of fixed income data is questionable at best. While credit ratings are fairly accurate, I have found yield to worst data being off by more than 50 bps and effective duration being inaccurate by more than a year for municipal managers. It has gotten to the point that for running searches, we often reach out to the manager to provide data for us, as the data we get from morningstar is too inaccurate. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
It includes data for almost any kind of investments available. The global databases include Exchange-Traded funds, fixed income, mutual funds and also model portfolios among other things. The support I get from the MS Direct team has always been very good and there are lots of on-demand and live traning for learning functions of the tool. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
This tool is for someone who is more advanced in their knowledge of investments and reporting. It is a very robust application that has an extensive breath of functionaility. With that said, having so many avenues to pull data and create reports, presentations, etc, the tool can take some time to get fully comfortable with and there is definitely a learning curve in using each of the features. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Ease of use with portfolio analytics, such as attriubtion, portfolio analysis, asset allocation and Direct Lens. Customer support is normally very quick and they are usually very helpful in fixing my issues. Frequency of use is fine as you can preset up your portfolio which allows for ease of implementation of graphs and charts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Sometimes faulty data or out of data data. Speed can sometimes be slow copared to other softwares and also it looks slightly outdated. Ease of integration fwith Excel add-in has been difficult and I find if you do anything other than templates its hard to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Variety of available data points, ease of creating charts in presentation studio Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Data quality is constantly an issue. Data is often missing or inaccurate. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Morningstar Direct is fairly easy to use and great for creating regular reports. The platform has several built-in reporting tools to easily generate reports from a template. For customizable reports, Analytics Lab is a great tool for Python users. Morningstar has a wide scope of data that is reguarly updated. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Most issues with Direct are minor, although not insiginifigant. Much of Morningstar's data is surveyed and there are instances of a fund company reporting bad data. Morningstar could improve its data auditing to improve data quality. Also, the documentation for data sources and calculation methods is sometimes difficult to sift through, especially for datapoints that Morningstar calculates. Some data submission processes are sometimes repetitive and not efficient. Morningstar Support is not always reliable and many data issues reoccur due to not adressing the root cause. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I use the data for general fund analysis and comparison against other funds. They have the ability to run overlap holdings between funds as well as pulling historical data, such as capital gains. It is also a good general database of all funds that are outstanding which is easier than other data services where they monitor the amount of data you pull and cap your limits. I use the platform on a weekly basis whether for adhoc requests ore general reports. There is also a customer service email/number to reach out to for any direct questions, and a contact often reaches out to schedule/review new feature updates. I like that it has an excel add-in to pull data directly from the platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Writing formulas to find what I need is not necessarily the most intuitive, but no platform has it easy in this regard. It might just take some time to get used to. Sometimes, the data can also be wrong depending on the investment product so helpful to cross-check against another solution, but overall it is a good way to get an overview of a particular product type or comparison. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The breadth of data available is one of the best in the industry, and the flexibility and user-friendliness of the tools are great. Customer support is also very responsive. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The holes in data on a daily basis when getting performance batch jobs. We have had recurring issues with, in particular, NASDAQ index data not updating in a timely fashion. The response has often been that the vendor's data feed arrived too late for the nightly process to pick it up and that we will have to wait until the following day for the data to update. A solution that allows for intra-day refreshes should be available in this day-and-age. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The data is unmatched, and rarely innacurate Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Service can be a challenge, as our dedicated service contact was taken away and we now are sent to a call center that can take days to resolve issues. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
