Products May 2, 2016

Morningstar Launches Portal for Advisers

The mobile-ready portal includes customized reports of investors’ accounts and provides a more holistic view of their financial situations.
Reported by

Morningstar Inc. has launched ByAllAccounts, a personal financial management portal in the firm’s account aggregation service.

The mobile-friendly portal pulls together all of an investor’s account information and updates advisers daily to provide them with a more intuitive system for showing clients their entire balance sheets. ByAllAccounts recently tripled the number of data sources it aggregates to 15,000, including liabilities such as loans and credit card debt, to fully understand an individual’s net worth.

ByAllAccounts includes a drag-and-drop feature that looks at an investor’s total wealth, balance sheet, cash flows and asset allocation. It includes customized report generation, a document vault, and alerts that tell investors if their asset allocation is no longer in balance, funds are transferred out of an account, or a deposit is made to an account. Advisers can also customize branding of the portal and use it to analyze their entire book of business. They can also choose any of these elements as stand-alone tools.

“Morningstar has the most comprehensive data in the industry, and our new portal helps advisers, their home offices and their clients visualize that data together in a more meaningful way,” says Tricia Rothschild, head of adviser solutions for Morningstar. “Investors want to work with financial advisers who have a more holistic, or complete, view of their financial situation. Our new personal financial management portal helps advisers free up time previously spent gathering data from disparate sources, allowing them to spend that time more constructively consulting and solving problems for clients.”

Products May 2, 2016

MassMutual Unveils Spanish-Language Financial Goal Calculator

MassMutual has introduced new financial and retirement calculators aimed at a Spanish-speaking audience. 
Reported by

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. (MassMutual) announced the launch of a new mobile-friendly, Spanish-language financial goal calculator on MassMutual.com/Latino.  

According to the firm, the calculator was developed to address the top financial concerns of consumers found in MassMutual’s State of the Hispanic American Family study. These include income, savings, retirement and debt. 

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The calculator addresses each financial concern by helping consumers set a goal for each using the concept of 5-10-15-20 as a guideline. Under this scheme, “5” is for increasing your annual income by at least 5% each year; “10” is for saving at least 10% of your net annual income; “15” is for targeting a retirement nest egg of about 15 times your annual income; and “20” is for planning to have all debt (excluding your mortgage) paid down within 20 years.

None of these goals will be easy for working families, but David Hufnagel, Latino market director for MassMutual, says that the firm too often hears clients say, “I don’t even know where to begin when it comes to planning for the future.”

“The calculator is a simple first step in creating a roadmap for the financial future of families and their loved ones,” he explains. “Just a few minutes and basic financial numbers are needed to begin.”

Users are guided through a series of questions that address financial concerns and will receive insights on what their financial future may look like if they set and achieve specific goals. This information can be printed or emailed for later reference and use, for example in conversation with a financial adviser or broker.  

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