Products May 4, 2016

New Tool Compares Fund Portfolios Based on Style Factors

Peer Insights provides style and risk insights tailored to the vocabulary of investment professionals and their clients.
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Style Research is launching Peer Insights to help investment professionals directly compare fund portfolios based on style factors. 

The new product uses fund data from Morningstar Inc. to provide deep, independent insight into portfolios. With Peer Insights, users can compare portfolios and fund managers on a standalone basis or against industry indices.

“At surface level, funds can often seem highly similar, despite significant differences in key underlying factors. Investors need to be able to compare portfolios on a granular level,” says Joanna McGinley, head of global redistributor solutions for Morningstar. “We’re providing our data to Peer Insights to help investors identify and highlight style and risk differences among funds as they compare portfolios and make investing decisions.”

“By providing style and risk insights tailored to the vocabulary of investment professionals and their clients, Peer Insights greatly reduces associated inefficiency and risk,” adds Bernie Nelson, president, North America, at Style Research. “This supports confident decision-making with the ability to communicate a clear story to stakeholders.”

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Products May 4, 2016

EBSA Covers Client Basics in Video Series

A new video series from the Employee Benefits Security Administration covers topics including setting financial goals, budgeting, determining a retirement savings rate and managing debt. 
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The Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) has posted the “Savings Fitness Financial Planning Video Series,” featuring four short educational videos on the following topics:

• Setting Financial Goals, which helps workers establish their short- and long-term goals and think about how to accomplish them (available here);
• Budgeting, which helps workers organize financial documents, set up a budget and track their progress (available here);
• Determining a Target Retirement Saving Rate, which helps workers figure out what percentage of their current annual salary they should be saving for retirement (available here); and
• Debt Management (available here).

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