Morningstar signs up Skandia to new portfolio tool

Skandiahas become the first customer in Australia to sign up toMorningstar’s Portfolio X-Ray tool — an instrument that details fund aggregate portfolio asset allocations, regional exposures, stock sectors, and investment styles.

“With Portfolio X-Ray, advisers can scan a client’s overall Australian and international equities fund portfolio to create a comprehensive picture of the underlying securities, and highlight anomalies, setting the stage for the adviser’s recommendations,” Morningstar Australia sales and marketing head, Christine Winter, says.

While Skandia investment research head William Burkitt says the adoption of the tool is part of the group’s aim to deliver solid investment research information and tools to financial advisers for the construction of quality portfolios for their clients.

“As a manager of managers, we have been educating financial advisers about the importance of portfolio construction for some time,” Burkitt says.

Winter adds that by assembling and monitoring portfolios based on fundamental analysis of the underlying holdings, advisers can locate potential trouble spots easily, and help their clients avoid unpleasant surprises.

The tool also includes an ‘Ownership Zone’ facility, which is a graphical tool that plots a fund’s holdings by style and market-cap concentration.

“Ownership zones help advisers build even more diversified and style-controlled portfolios, by showing the style differences between two funds which have the same broad style box locations,” Winter says.