Morningstar Acquires ByAllAccounts for $28M

Morningstar announced Tuesday that it had acquired ByAllAccounts, a data aggregator that serves financial advisors, for $28 million.

ByAllAccounts has a network of more than 2,100 clients including independent advisors, asset managers, wealth managers and family offices, trust companies and broker-dealers. The company also works with 4,300 custodians and 40 platform and service providers.

More than $730 billion in assets move through ByAllAccounts’ aggregation engine every day. The system uses patented artificial intelligence technology to collect account data that can be viewed on almost any platform, according to Morningstar.

“ByAllAccounts is a trusted name with a reputation for high-quality and sophisticated aggregation technology that eliminates manual data entry and mitigates human error,” Joe Mansueto, chairman and CEO of Morningstar, said in a statement. “We expect this acquisition to enhance many of Morningstar’s key solutions across our core customer groups, particularly bolstering our offerings that support an advisor’s workflow.”

Mansueto said Morningstar will continue to develop ByAllAccounts’ third-party distribution relationships. He noted that advisors are under more pressure to provide a full picture of a client’s wealth.

"The ability to efficiently provide a holistic view of an investor’s total financial portfolio is now a requirement for wealth managers — not a ‘nice to have’ capability,” he said.

James Carney, president and CEO of ByAllAccounts and an occasional blogger for ThinkAdvisor, will continue to lead the company of about 60 employees.

“Morningstar has extensive reach within the wealth management community,” Carney said in a statement. “Becoming part of Morningstar will broaden our distribution and give us access to its breadth of capabilities, including its vast investment data expertise. As investment vehicles become increasingly global in nature, Morningstar’s international operations will also allow us to respond to the growing need for data aggregation outside the United States.”

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Blogs by James Carney on ThinkAdvisor: