The bond universe will be available next month in Morningstar Advisor Workstation, the research and investment planning software platform used by roughly one out of every four financial advisors in the United States, and in April in Morningstar Office, a portfolio management solution for independent advisors.

Morningstar will now feature reports and research on more than 1.3 million individual bonds, including corporate, government and municipal issues. It represents the first time an advisor software platform has offered comprehensive bond data alongside underlying holdings-based analytics for multi-security portfolios.

"For the longest time, individual bond data was the missing piece of the puzzle in advisor software solutions," said Melinda Sgariglia, vice president of broker/dealer solutions for Morningstar. "With Interactive Data's coverage of the bond universe, advisors using Advisor Workstation or Morningstar Office can now incorporate bonds into their client portfolio reports to gain a full, holistic view of an investor's holdings."

"We are pleased to be able to provide a wide range of fixed income data and evaluations to Morningstar for integration into their advisor software products," said Jean Aiken, vice president, business development group for Interactive Data. "The availability of our depth of descriptive market data and independent evaluations on Morningstar's platform provides advisors with advanced capabilities for analyzing portfolio information."

Advisors will be able to use Morningstar's investment database to search, screen, and sort bond information and create Investment Detail ReportsTM on individual bonds, which will contain up to 10 years of performance history so that advisors can evaluate how the bond issue has weathered a variety of market conditions. Advisors can also use the report's bond issue details and risk exposure to evaluate the bond's role within a portfolio and compare against other bond issues.

Once the bond data is available, when advisors import their client portfolios from third-party integration partners into Advisor Workstation or Morningstar Office, the software will automatically recognize the fixed income securities in those portfolios, saving time and resources by eliminating the need to manually map the security or assign a less-accurate proxy.