Morningstar Brings Greater Transparency to Private Markets for Advisors

Business Wire

24-06-2025

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Morningstar, Inc. (Nasdaq: MORN), a leading provider of independent investing insights, today debuted new features in Direct Advisory Suite (the next phase of Advisor Workstation) to help financial advisors analyze and integrate private investments into client portfolios. These enhancements are now available and will be showcased at the Morningstar Investment Conference, taking place June 25-26 in Chicago.
'Morningstar's universal language of investing has helped advisors and investors bring clarity to complexity for decades,' said Kunal Kapoor, chief executive officer of Morningstar. 'As private investments become part of more investor portfolios, we're extending that language to help bring the same comparability and confidence to private markets that we've delivered for investors in public markets.'
The new capabilities in Direct Advisory Suite are designed to help advisors evaluate, compare, and communicate the role of private investments within a broader portfolio context. Key features include:
Expanded Investment Research: Advisors now have access to a new private capital fund universe to screen, compare, and monitor private investments, and semiliquid vehicles such as interval and tender-offer funds are now easier to find. Morningstar's updated categorization system integrates private capital vehicles alongside public market securities, so investors can analyze investments holistically.
Enhanced Risk Profiling: The Morningstar Risk Model now accounts for private capital funds, and the Morningstar Portfolio Risk Score breaks down the risk percentage driven by volatility and liquidity restrictions.
Portfolio Transparency Tools: Advisors can visualize the percentage of a portfolio exposed to private investments.
Proposal-Ready Reporting: FINRA-reviewed investment proposal summary report now includes new risk and liquidity metrics.
Alternative Investments Hub: A new topic page aggregates Morningstar's research and editorial content on alternatives, supporting advisor education and client conversations.
'As private markets become more accessible, advisors need actionable data, standardized analytics, and unified workflows to assess the full spectrum of investment opportunities,' said James Rhodes, president of Morningstar's Direct Platform. 'We're drawing on our history as an investor advocate and force for transparency to give Direct Advisory Suite users the ability to analyze private investments with the same rigor they expect for public markets—helping them deliver desired outcomes for their clients.'
Converging Markets
The new features come at a time of expanding investor choice and accelerating interest in private markets. Morningstar's 2025 Voice of the Investor study found 25% of retail investors already hold private equity investments, and that number rose to 35% among those with $500,000 or more in investable assets.
To help investors approach decisions with clarity and careful due diligence, Morningstar is drawing on PitchBook's extensive private market data and extending its independent analysis to the fastest-growing corners of the private and semi-private market universe. Next quarter, Morningstar analysts will begin publishing qualitative, forward-looking Medalist Ratings for semiliquid funds such as interval funds, tender-offer funds, nontraded business development companies (BDCs), and nontraded real estate investment trusts (REITs).
The newly published State of Semiliquid Funds emphasizes that the expansion of access to private markets is well underway; however, semiliquid funds are not making private markets more affordable. While semiliquid funds offer expanded access to private markets and potential for higher returns, they come with significant risks, including average fees that are three times higher than traditional open-end funds, widely used leverage that magnifies both losses and gains, and potential liquidity constraints.
To learn more about how Morningstar's data speaks converging markets, visit WhereDataSpeaks.com. For more on Direct Advisory Suite, click here.
About Morningstar, Inc.
Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment insights in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The Company offers an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers and owners, retirement plan providers and sponsors, institutional investors in the debt and private capital markets, and alliances and redistributors. Morningstar provides data and research insights on a wide range of investment offerings, including managed investment products, publicly listed companies, private capital markets, debt securities, and real-time global market data. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiaries, with approximately $341 billion in AUMA as of March 31, 2025. The Company operates through wholly-owned subsidiaries in 32 countries. For more information, visit www.morningstar.com/company. Follow Morningstar on X @MorningstarInc.
About PitchBook, a Morningstar Company
PitchBook, a Morningstar company, offers financial data and software that provides transparency into the capital markets to help professionals discover and execute opportunities with confidence and efficiency. PitchBook collects and analyzes detailed data across both private and public markets—including VC, PE, leveraged loans, private credit, real estate, real assets, infrastructure, funds of funds, secondaries, co-investments, CLOs, and more. The company's data and analysis are available through the PitchBook Platform, industry news, and in-depth reports. Founded in 2007, PitchBook operates globally with more than 3,000 team members. Its platform, data, and research serve over 100,000 professionals around the world.
About Morningstar's Manager Research Group
Morningstar's Manager Research Group consists of various wholly owned subsidiaries of Morningstar, Inc. including, but not limited to, Morningstar Research Services LLC. Morningstar Manager Research provides independent, fundamental analysis on managed investment strategies. Morningstar views are expressed in the form of Morningstar Medalist Ratings, which are derived through research of three key pillars—People, Process, and Parent. The Morningstar Medalist Rating is the summary expression of Morningstar's forward-looking analysis of investment strategies as offered via specific vehicles using a rating scale of Gold, Silver, Bronze, Neutral, and Negative. A global research team issues detailed research reports on strategies that span vehicle, asset class, and geography.
Medalist Ratings are not statements of fact, nor are they credit or risk ratings, and should not be used as the sole basis for investment decisions. A Medalist Rating is not intended to be nor is a guarantee of future performance. This press release is for informational purposes only; references to securities should not be considered an offer or solicitation to buy or sell the securities.
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