Amazon Web Services Case Studies Morningstar Uses AWS to Rapidly Create Online Investment Marketplace

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	Morningstar Uses AWS to Rapidly Create Online Investment Marketplace Amazon Web Services

Morningstar Uses AWS to Rapidly Create Online Investment Marketplace

Amazon Web Services

Technology Category	Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Applicable Industries	Finance & Insurance
Applicable Functions	Business Operation Sales & Marketing
Use Cases	Fraud Detection Supply Chain Visibility
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services Software Design & Engineering Services
Challenge	In 2016, the U.S. Department of Labor announced upcoming rule changes that would hold brokers and other investment advisers to a “fiduciary standard,” meaning they would be legally required to act in the best financial interest of their clients. This shift would restrict the types of investments that could be selected for certain retirement plans. Morningstar, Inc. recognized an opportunity to help employers find investments that comply with the fiduciary rule through an easy-to-use, online marketplace named Morningstar Plan Advantage. The marketplace would explain the regulations, offer searching and filtering of compliant investments, and ease enrollment into these plans. APIs connected to the application would allow investment providers to push data into the marketplace. Morningstar hoped to deliver an outstanding experience for employers and investment providers, and build revenue by increasing sales of plans for which they provide administrative services. Read More
About Customer	Morningstar, Inc., is a leading global provider of independent investment research and products and services for financial advisors, asset managers, retirement-plan providers and sponsors, and individual and institutional investors. It is based in the United States and employs over 4,300 people. The company offers a wide range of services and products, including investment research, financial planning tools, and investment management services. Morningstar is committed to providing independent and unbiased investment information to help investors make informed decisions. The company's mission is to create great products that help investors reach their financial goals. Read More
Solution	Building the online investment marketplace was the responsibility of the Morningstar Workplace division. As part of an overall journey toward increased use of cloud services, Morningstar had been using Amazon Web Services (AWS) in various capacities across the organization as a supplement to its own data centers. Morningstar Workplace chose to use Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) because it allowed the team to independently provision cloud-based development environments while retaining the ability to securely connect to corporate data centers. This combination of agility and control helped Morningstar Workplace get the product to market in time for the rule change. While Morningstar corporate data centers tend to use SQL Server, the Workplace team wanted to use a low-maintenance database hosted in Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) to speed time-to-market and improve the manageability of the new application. To host the APIs, Morningstar used AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Amazon API Gateway provides a streamlined way for financial services providers to add their products to the marketplace, and will accommodate rapid growth after the regulation goes into effect. The marketplace also employs Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to host assets and data, and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for basic computing services. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms

Applicable Industries

Finance & Insurance

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Fraud Detection

Supply Chain Visibility

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

Software Design & Engineering Services

Challenge

In 2016, the U.S. Department of Labor announced upcoming rule changes that would hold brokers and other investment advisers to a “fiduciary standard,” meaning they would be legally required to act in the best financial interest of their clients. This shift would restrict the types of investments that could be selected for certain retirement plans. Morningstar, Inc. recognized an opportunity to help employers find investments that comply with the fiduciary rule through an easy-to-use, online marketplace named Morningstar Plan Advantage. The marketplace would explain the regulations, offer searching and filtering of compliant investments, and ease enrollment into these plans. APIs connected to the application would allow investment providers to push data into the marketplace. Morningstar hoped to deliver an outstanding experience for employers and investment providers, and build revenue by increasing sales of plans for which they provide administrative services.

About Customer

Morningstar, Inc., is a leading global provider of independent investment research and products and services for financial advisors, asset managers, retirement-plan providers and sponsors, and individual and institutional investors. It is based in the United States and employs over 4,300 people. The company offers a wide range of services and products, including investment research, financial planning tools, and investment management services. Morningstar is committed to providing independent and unbiased investment information to help investors make informed decisions. The company's mission is to create great products that help investors reach their financial goals.

Solution

Building the online investment marketplace was the responsibility of the Morningstar Workplace division. As part of an overall journey toward increased use of cloud services, Morningstar had been using Amazon Web Services (AWS) in various capacities across the organization as a supplement to its own data centers. Morningstar Workplace chose to use Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) because it allowed the team to independently provision cloud-based development environments while retaining the ability to securely connect to corporate data centers. This combination of agility and control helped Morningstar Workplace get the product to market in time for the rule change. While Morningstar corporate data centers tend to use SQL Server, the Workplace team wanted to use a low-maintenance database hosted in Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) to speed time-to-market and improve the manageability of the new application. To host the APIs, Morningstar used AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Amazon API Gateway provides a streamlined way for financial services providers to add their products to the marketplace, and will accommodate rapid growth after the regulation goes into effect. The marketplace also employs Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to host assets and data, and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for basic computing services.

Impact #1	Saved significant time and money using AWS.
Impact #2	Provisioned the minimum required capacity when the marketplace was launched and then scaled up seamlessly to meet demand.
Impact #3	Invited customers to test and provide feedback on the application, and simplified the process of producing co-branded versions to show prospective partners.

Impact #1

Saved significant time and money using AWS.

Impact #2

Provisioned the minimum required capacity when the marketplace was launched and then scaled up seamlessly to meet demand.

Impact #3

Invited customers to test and provide feedback on the application, and simplified the process of producing co-branded versions to show prospective partners.

Benefit #1	Saved four to six weeks of engineering time over the course of six months.

Benefit #1

Saved four to six weeks of engineering time over the course of six months.

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Overview

Morningstar Uses AWS to Rapidly Create Online Investment Marketplace

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit