Navigating Bewildering Funds Landscape – How Tech "Democratises" The Journey

Tom Burroughes

6 March 2024

It’s hard to avoid noticing how many new funds and investment products exist. The number of mutual funds globally increased from about 66,400 in 2009 to 137,892 in 2022 (source: Statista). Trying to sift through these to put clients’ portfolios together can only really be done with tech tools.

The process of scrutinising what funds are available, their track records, goals, fees, managers and locations is a herculean task. Firms such as (renamed from Refinitiv) and , a cloud-based platform firm, headquartered in London, redefines how asset managers engage clients, delivering streamlined and automated fund and investor reporting in the EMEA region and North America. It became part of the Morningstar Service Delivery Partner Program in October 2023. ID provides interactive fund information pages for investors, an automated print production service so that client reporting teams can create and schedule production cycles of pdf reports at scale, as well as providing investment dashboards and reports via a portal.

In December, Morningstar said it launched Direct Web Services, a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) which package Morningstar’s data, research, and calculation engines for financial services firms to use in their own digital solutions.

“We are democratising and demystifying this , for example, shows how the business of buying and selling funds has become more technologically advanced. Always, however, the potential grit in the wheels is a lack of quality data. Another factor to consider is ensuring total clarity on fees and costs – a point that regulators such as the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority keep a close eye on. Groups such as Calastone, for example, can use their collective purchasing power to obtain the kind of institutional buying muscle once the preserve of pension funds and life insurance schemes.

As one figure in the industry told this publication, the challenge of finding out information to choose funds is formidable, but the rise of AI will be important. “AI will really shape the future for investment advisors,” the figure said, noting the ability of AI tools to work through performance analysis, risk and volatility.