Morningstar offers office software on iPad app

Morningstar offers an iPad App to supplement its Morningstar Office software. What's cool about the app is that now advisers can easily view client information and investment data anywhere any time. The Morningstar for Advisors app provides instant views of client specific data for client meetings as well as for advisers' reviews outside the office, market monitoring and overall practice information. For client meetings, advisers can pull up Morningstar reports on demand and show a particular client's holdings along with the interactive Morningstar Portfolio X-Ray® tool. For advisers on the road or working from home, the app syncs clients' accounts, portfolios and investment information, allowing the adviser to review client information for monitoring or taking action. For overall market monitoring, advisers can access Morningstar's Analyst Reports and other proprietary data and ratings, find current securities quotes and create various investment performance charts. Finally, the Practice Dashboard provides an interactive practice summary, with information such as the adviser's total assets under management and a breakdown of top securities holdings. I tried it myself and it took no time to download and start playing with the app. It was totally intuitive. What I liked most was having instant, full color access to client information, market stats and Morningstar's charts, graphs and reports. I could see how the app would be quite impressive to clients. Imagine sitting down with a client and being able to show aggregate portfolio performance through easy-to-understand graphics, pull up a mutual fund report to discuss the merits or drawbacks of a particular fund, access realized gains or losses to date, display a comparison between the client's current and a model portfolio, and more. As competition and client demand make technology increasingly important, it's nice to find an offering that has low cost (free to Morningstar Office subscribers), easy implementation and big bang. And, in the spirit of full disclosure, although one of my roles is as a Morningstar employee, I'm writing this with my RIA (Rowling & Associates) hat on! Sheryl Rowling is head of rebalancing solutions at Morningstar Inc. and principal at Rowling & Associates. She considers herself a non-techie user of technology.