Morningstar Europe, an independent industry-leading provider of fund research, announced this week the launch of a new se
Morningstar Europe, an independent industry-leading provider of fund research, announced this week the launch of a new service: namely its Key Investor Information Document (KIID) Platform. One of the new provisions of UCITS IV will be for fund managers to produce easy to read fund documents to better enable retail investors to make investment decisions. Morningstar’s platform will offer UCITS fund managers and distributors a streamlined web-based service to produce KIID documents, thereby cutting down the amount of additional time that many expect. The platform is available for all EU-domiciled UCITS funds listed on Morningstar’s database. Users of the platform will have a fully integrated KIID template at hand, which meets ESMA guidelines or have the option of using their own template if already developed. Various data alerts and a choice of online delivery methods should ease some of the headaches being felt by management companies as they prepare to embrace the KIID document provisions. Morningstar UK CEO, Geoff Balzano (pictured) said that the new KIID requirements, whilst representing a “great leap forward” in terms of helping investors gather essential information on investments, also “presented industry challenges around document volume production, accuracy and timely delivery”. “Our new service enables firms to minimize their KIID production effort, freeing their resources for the critically important areas of review and approval,” said Balzano.
