Morningstar has entered into a multi-year agreement with the Personal Investment Management and Financial Advice Association (PIMFA) to become the exclusive index provider for PIMFA’s Private Investor Index Series and Equity Risk Index Series, effective March 2, 2026. The partnership will see both index series rebranded as Morningstar PIMFA Investor Index Series and Morningstar PIMFA Equity Risk Index Series, preserving ten years of historical data from inception. These benchmarks—comprising five composite indices each across equities, fixed income, real estate, cash and alternatives—serve five risk profiles (Conservative, Income, Balanced, Growth and Global Growth) and underpin performance measurement, asset allocation reviews and fund-manager comparisons for UK wealth managers overseeing £1.65 trillion in private savings. Morningstar will assume full index construction, quarterly rebalancing and committee oversight, leveraging its status as the fastest-growing global index provider over the past five years.

The Morningstar Center for Retirement & Policy Studies has unveiled its 2026 Managed Accounts Research Series alongside the Defined Contribution Outcomes Model (DCOM), a simulation framework built on millions of participant records spanning thousands of workplace retirement plans. Key findings demonstrate that adoption of a managed account could boost median wealth-to-salary ratios at retirement by 5.9% for target-date fund investors, 11.4% for self-directed participants and 7.7% on average. The youngest cohort (ages 20–24) may see up to a 22% improvement, while lower-income employees earning under $100,000 annually stand to gain the greatest relative benefit. The study also finds managed accounts enhance outcomes in 92% of plans with auto-enrollment and auto-escalation features. Future quarterly releases will dissect plan features that maximize managed account value, explore alternative default architectures and extend modeling into decumulation phases.