Practice management tech tips from advisors at Morningstar's conference

Financial advisors with decades of experience in the profession have learned how to use technology for their investment research, and they're willing to share their secrets.

In a panel at investment research, management and technology firm Morningstar's annual U.S. financial professional conference this week at Chicago's Navy Pier, Morningstar Instructional Designer Kira Frank called on more than 170 audience members attending the discussion "to be thieves" and "steal with reckless abandon" from the experts on stage. 

Taunya Villicana, CEO of Tucson, Arizona-based Aspirational Wealth Management; Ted Tiger, principal and branch manager with Winthrop, Massachusetts-based Tiger Investment Services; and Eric Peterson, the founder of Springfield, Missouri-based advisory practice Peterson Wealth Advisors discussed how they use Morningstar's Advisor Workstation as independent advisors. In the process, they went beyond a sales pitch for a company that generated more than $2 billion in revenue last year with the majority from enterprise agreements and other subscriptions.

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The panelists shared why it's essential for advisors to master the technology that best fits them, their team and their clients. They also pulled back the curtain on the reasons behind their loyalty to Morningstar's service in an increasingly crowded marketplace that includes direct competitors Broadridge, CapIntel, Orion Advisor Solutions, Nitrogen Wealth and YCharts, all of which cater to the record number of independent advisory firms in the industry.

"With 250 households and over 600 accounts, I've got to be very efficient," Peterson said. "My strength, my power is in proof, being able to document. I don't golf. I don't take people out for fancy dinners or this, that and the other thing."

In that vein, Peterson described how he uses a "hall pass" at his advisory practice that enables fund wholesalers to arrange a meeting — if they haven't secured one, they don't get an appointment. Those kinds of time-savers enable him and the other advisors to spend their time researching potential investments on behalf of their clients and building their portfolios. 

For example, Tiger described the story of a client who came back from a trip to Japan with the idea to invest in small-cap Japanese companies, which the veteran planner then managed to track down alongside accompanying relevant metrics through Morningstar's Workstation. In thinking of some "megatrends," Villicana said she used the tech tools to present clients with potential investments in smaller or midsize firms "you may be using and you don't know and maybe haven't even heard of" in areas such as cybersecurity, immunology and genomics.

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She often deploys the "X-ray" solution that enables her and her team to "get it all consolidated in one screen or one actual document where we can talk through it and I can make it relatable for our client," Villicana said.

"We're doing all of these diff asset allocation models for our clients, so how do we demonstrate what's inside?" she said. "I get the 'Aha!' moments, and that's important. Every time we meet with people, we're talking about complex things and trying to make them very simple."

Tiger starts each morning performing client account reviews "to see if any of the statistics have changed" and whether "the investments they're in are appropriate at this time," he said. A "scatterplot" displaying the risks and potential gains of the investments through metrics like standard deviations and returns against benchmarks gives Tiger and the clients "a visual and a statistical representation of the client's portfolio that's understandable," Tiger noted.  

"The scatterplot is probably what I personally use more than anything else," he said. "I manage people's expectations and the risks they don't understand. If I can show them the risks involved with whatever investments they're in, that makes them feel comfortable."

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For that matter, each panelist acknowledged that there can be a learning curve with any new technology, and Peterson advised the audience not to "be afraid of the little blue question mark" that presents answers and instructional resources in Morningstar's system. In addition, the event itself offered the opportunity for peer learning among advisors and sessions with the company's specialists for individual tutorials.

"This is my 30th Morningstar conference, and I'm in my 40th year in business," Peterson said. "Come to this conference. Ask questions. Go to the workstation training. …  This is where you're going to meet the people who make things happen with mutual funds."