How to Use Direct Advisory Suite to Better Serve Clients

Today’s investors are looking for more than investment advice—they’re looking for clarity and confidence. Morningstar’s Investor Perspectives research found that more than half of US investors feel uncertain or nervous about the market, while increasing interest in areas such as private markets and artificial intelligence is creating new questions and knowledge gaps. 

These findings underscore a growing opportunity for advisors to simplify complexity, strengthen trust, and keep clients focused on their long-term goals. Morningstar’s Direct Advisory Suite helps advisors address these areas of concern through a unified investment workflow that combines research, portfolio construction, and practice support in one experience.

The product leverages insights from Morningstar’s Investor Perspectives for Financial Advisors, which surveys over 500 advisors across the country annually, to meet advisors’ needs and help reduce the need for multiple point solutions. Direct Advisory Suite combines research, portfolio construction, and practice support in a unified workflow. Advisors can save by reducing the need for multiple point solutions with Morningstar Direct Advisory Suite. 

With Direct Advisory Suite, you can expect a connected advisor solution spanning everything from proposal creation to investment research and planning.

Direct Advisory Suite's key functions include:

• Access to independent data, research, and analysis
• Client-friendly reporting
• Personalized investment planning
• Efficient and trusted AI assistance

This Morningstar platform provides a simplified client experience enhanced by AI-driven workflows, independent ratings and research embedded into everyday advisor decisions, and seamless integrations that unify data, planning, and insights.

Investors typically have a limited understanding of risk, so it’s essential for advisors to cut through the noise and explain complex topics in an easily digestible way. Using risk tools during client conversations allows advisors to better address what matters most, reinforcing their value in the relationship.This is where the Morningstar Portfolio Risk Score can provide clarity. It’s a metric that creates clarity around portfolio risk by measuring true exposure around holdings, and aligning client risk profiles with proposed portfolios.

The Morningstar Portfolio Risk Score is:

• Backed by our trusted data and research
• Built on a holdings-based methodology
• Designed to connect client risk profiles to portfolios within one workflow
• Built to streamline the move from profiling to proposals, enabling tailored, defensible recommendations

The chart below ranks the factors advisors consider most important when evaluating risk tools, with ease of client understanding standing out as the leader with nearly two-thirds of advisors, 63%, placing this in the top two boxes on the importance scale. Communication tools accounted for 29%, within the top two boxes on the importance scale. Customization, portfolio comparison capabilities, and integration with planning tools form a second tier, each cited by roughly 20%–25% of respondents.

The key takeaway is that advisors prioritize helping clients understand risk over technical features, methodology, or tool design. For advisors, these findings reinforce that the most effective risk tools are those that simplify complex concepts, support meaningful conversations, and help investors connect portfolio risk to their financial goals.

Four in five advisors are using GenAI in their practice today, up from two-thirds in 2025. Morningstar’s AI assistant, embedded in Direct Advisory Suite, surfaces the right insights when advisors want and need them.

Our AI assistant provides immediate insight, flagging high-impact rating changes and client-specific portfolio risk drift. The AI assistant gives advisors the ability to cut meeting prep time down to under five minutes and accelerate proposal drafts to under 60 seconds, turning insights to impact faster. Outputs are built on Morningstar data, research, and analytics advisors already trust, backed by governance filters, audit logs, and compliance-safe language. Advisors also have the option to work inside Direct Advisory Suite and extend those capabilities via the Morningstar MCP Server into ChatGPT and Claude.

Per the survey results, this is where advisors are currently using generative AI in their practices. Internal productivity tasks such as meeting summaries and email drafts lead at 43%, followed by idea generation or brainstorming (36%), research and due diligence (35%), and client communications or messaging (33%). Every named use case grew from 2025, and the share of advisors not using GenAI at all fell to 20% from 33%. 

The findings suggest advisors who have adopted GenAI are primarily using it to improve efficiency and communication, though research and due diligence at 35%, up from 24% in 2025, is emerging as a growing use case. For advisors, the opportunity lies in using AI to streamline administrative work and enhance client communications, freeing up more time for meaningful conversations, personalized guidance, and education.

The survey results also highlight where advisors believe GenAI can have the greatest positive impact on client service and advice delivery. The leading use case is improving efficiency in client communications, 57%, followed by  supporting investment research and due diligence, 36%, and enhancing client onboarding and data-gathering processes, 33%. Newly added answer options also drew interest, led by streamlining investment screening and selection, 30%. 

Notably, nearly half of advisors (48%) say GenAI has already significantly or moderately improved their efficiency, up from 36% in 2025. For advisors, the findings suggest GenAI's greatest value lies in turning complex, time-consuming tasks into more efficient and scalable processes, enabling advisors to spend more time delivering personalized guidance, educating clients, and providing the clarity needed to make confident financial decisions.

As private investments gain momentum, new opportunities are emerging for firms to support their clients' evolving needs. Advisors need to be increasingly ready to quickly explain the impact of integrating private investments into their client's portfolios.

Direct Advisory Suite helps advisors access PitchBook's market-leading private data, research, and analysis. Within Direct Advisory Suite, advisors can leverage the Morningstar PitchBook Private Capital Funds universe, with filters for interval and tender offer funds. 

Advisors can also access a new Alternatives Investments Topic page with relevant Morningstar research, along with tools to capture non‑liquid investment preferences within the Morningstar Portfolio Risk Score, which accounts for private capital funds. Advisors will also find new data point visualizations including 
“percentage of risk for volatility” and “percentage 
of private investments" within Direct Advisory Suite.

Private investments have become an increasingly discussed topic in wealth management. Morningstar’s Investor Perspectives survey examined how widely advisors are adopting these strategies.

As part of Morningstar's research, advisors were asked about their use of private investments. The findings suggest that although private investments are gaining traction, adoption remains far from universal. Forty percent of advisors now offer private investments to their clients, up from 35% in 2025 and another 5% plan to, but 55% neither offer nor plan to offer them.

For advisors, this highlights the importance of helping clients understand both the potential role and the complexities of private investments, using clear explanations, risk assessment tools, and educational resources to determine whether these strategies align with individual goals and risk tolerance.

While adoption of private investments is not yet universal, advisors already using these strategies largely expect allocations to hold steady or grow over the coming year, signaling continued confidence in the asset class. Half expect client allocations to stay about the same and 46% expect an increase, while just 5% anticipate a decrease.

Advisors’ services are expanding beyond traditional management. Clients require more personalized and frequent communications. Morningstar has solutions to make client portfolio construction and reporting easier than ever.

Use Direct Advisory Suite to:

• Upload JPG or PDF portfolios and statements to view recommendations and generate reports fast.
• Leverage single-page portfolio construction to evaluate, select, and allocate investments on one screen, with real-time updates.
• Show clients recommended changes to their portfolio holdings, along with an action to buy, hold, or sell using the Action Plan Report.

Morningstar's research also highlights the ways clients view advisors as adding value to the relationship, with investment expertise and emotional benefits both ranking among the top reasons. The top response from the survey, cited by 48% of clients, is that advisors manage their investments with expertise, followed by making them feel more secure about their financial future, 38%, and educating them on financial concepts and investment options, 30%. 

Notably, helping clients make informed financial decisions, 26%, saw the largest year-over-year increase, rising 4 percentage points from 2024. For advisors, the findings reinforce that bringing clarity is about more than investment management—it is about helping clients feel confident, informed, and secure as they navigate financial decisions and market uncertainty.

On the flip side, our research also captured how advisors themselves believe they deliver the most value to clients. Like the client responses, advisors most frequently cited managing investments with expertise, 41%, and tailoring financial plans to clients’ unique needs and goals, 40%, followed closely by helping clients feel more secure about their financial future, 39%, and providing peace of mind from the stress of money management, 38%. Emotional support during financial or personal hardships saw the biggest gain, rising to 27% from 21% in 2025 and 14% in 2024.

For advisors, the findings suggest value is increasingly tied to helping clients navigate complexity with confidence and clarity—not just through financial expertise, but through education, guidance, and ongoing support that empowers better decision-making.

As investor expectations continue to evolve, advisors who understand their clients’ concerns, goals, and information gaps are better positioned to deliver meaningful guidance. Morningstar’s research and advisor solutions are designed to help turn those insights into action. 

To learn more about Direct Advisory Suite, please reach out to your account lead, and explore our complete research findings and insights here.