Morningstar is the clear leader when it comes to the preferred technology tools of the majority of managers, as no less than 87% of advisors in any of the three channels report being regular consumers of content and tools from the Chicago-based research firm. However, there are cross-channel preferences for different service providers. For example, wire house and regional advisors were overwhelmingly more likely to use S&P’s research tools than were advisors in other segments, with 67% of advisors here stating they used these tools versus only 31% for RIAs and 32% for IBD firms. W/R advisors were also the primary users of services from both Dorsey Wright and Credit Suisse, at 34% and 21% respectively, compared to responses ranging from 3% to 8% from the other channels. RIAs and independent broker dealers were the most likely to use fi360 as a research and portfolio management service. However, on the whole, the W/R channel are bigger users of most of the leading research services, which may reflect a larger research budget available to advisors with those firms.
