Morningstar Workstation, E*Assist

Tech Bits appears on the web and in IN Daily every Friday. Comments are welcome at IN Editor@InvestmentNews. Morningstar adds new capabilities to Advisor Workstation Office Edition product Several features were added to the web-based Morningstar Advisor Workstation Office Edition, the investment-planning platform that allows independent financial advisers to analyze portfolios based on tax changes, and required minimum distributions and early withdrawal penalties from retirement accounts. Enhancements include Ibbotson capital market assumptions for pre-tax returns, standard deviation and correlations among asset classes. Ibbotson is a registered investment adviser and wholly owned subsidiary of Morningstar Inc. both of Chicago. Advisers will have the option of using the Ibbotson data or their own assumptions. They can also establish asset-class categories for modeling portfolios. Once advisers have created their target asset-class portfolio, they can use an “auto-allocate” feature to allocate securities. In addition, advisers can generate forecasts for such goals as saving for a college education, a house and retirement. Visit the Advisor Workstation page online for more information. E*Assist platform adds auto-fill and auto-file form generation and management features E*Assist, a New York-based provider of compliance-management tools offered to broker-dealers, has added form generation and management applications to its platform. A new auto-fill application is designed to increase the efficiency of the sales process and back-office processing by pre-populating forms with account information from the E*Assist platform. The auto-file tool then automatically creates a record— eliminating the need for re-keying or scanning — which is archived and accessible to supervisors and compliance officers. These capabilities are available to all users of the E*Assist platform at no additional cost. “Typically, reps spend 10-15 minutes completing the paperwork for one form. After they are done, they have a piece of paper that needs to be filed or scanned,” said Ted Tsung, chief executive of E*Assist. For more information, visit E*Assist online. Davis D. Janowski is the technology reporter for InvestmentNews. Read our weekly online columns: MONDAY: IN Practice by Maureen Wilke WEDNESDAY: OpINion Online by Evan Cooper THURSDAY: IN Retirement FRIDAY: Tech Bits by Davis. D. Janowski