TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. is offerings its institutional services clients access to a branded version of Morningstar's Advisor Workstation.
   The workstation has been integrated into TD Waterhouse Institutional Services' Veo technology platform, and is offered in several packages at special rates for TD Waterhouse's clients.
   TD Ameritrade Holding is the newly formed financial services parent company formed through the merger of Ameritrade and TD Waterhouse. TD Waterhouse Institutional Services is among the company's operating units.
   "Advisors deserve easy access to the industry's best products in a format that helps them maximize efficiency," says Brian Stimpfl, senior vice president of business solutions for TD Waterhouse Institutional Services. "That's why we built Veo to be so flexible. In addition to offering our own proprietary solutions, we can readily customize industry-leading applications to fit our platform."
   The Morningstar workstation is being touted by TD Waterhouse as a time saver for advisors, providing a unified data solution that negates the need to pull data from multiple sources.
   According to TD Waterhouse, its advisors say they spend up to 500 hours per year, or about 10 hours per week, updating client data through the use of a myriad of planning and analysis tools.
   The integration of Morningstar's workstation into Veo reduces the need for manual data entry, allowing subscribers to import client, portfolio and custom household data into the Morningstar workstation. The workstation can then analyze the data and prepare reports for client meetings, according to TD Waterhouse.
   The Morningstar workstation subscriptions range from a basic plan for research and client portfolios to a broader package that includes sales and planning tools. The basic plan includes a full range of Morningstar research databases, including stocks, mutual funds, variable annuities, closed-end funds and ETFs, according to TD Waterhouse. The higher end package includes tools that help advisors analyze and construct portfolios, create customized hypotheticals and assess risk tolerance.

-FAnews Staff Report