Morningstar Announces Clearer, Simplified Medalist Rating to Empower Investor Success
Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ:MORN), a leading provider of independent investment insights, today announced significant updates to its Morningstar Medalist Rating™, its comprehensive forward-looking rating for managed investments. The updated methodology, which will go live globally in April 2026, is designed to simplify the rating structure, make the rating more transparent for investors, and enhance stability—empowering investors to more easily identify investments with the potential to outperform their Morningstar Category average.
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Morningstar's updated Medalist Rating uses a simplified structure and clearer input data to show how each pillar and Medalist Rating Price Score shape the overall rating.
"We're simplifying key elements of our forward-looking Medalist Ratings to increase usability and give investors a clearer view into how ratings are determined," said Jeffrey Schumacher, Director of Manager Research EMEA. "These updates provide the clear, easy-to-interpret insights the industry has been seeking."
Key Enhancements to the Medalist Rating
- Transparent Pillars: Quant-driven fundamental pillars (People, Process, Parent) will now include greater visibility into the underlying inputs — including new metrics like Fund Manager Successful Experience1— so investors can better understand how a Medalist Rating is determined. There will continue to be a delineation between pillar ratings that come from an analyst or algorithm.
- Simplified Structure: Funds are evaluated against their Morningstar Category average rather than a benchmark, enabling investors to more easily identify Medalist options within a category and make meaningful peer comparisons.
- New Price Score: A Morningstar Medalist Rating Price Score from –2.5 to 2.5 will explicitly reflect whether an investment's fee is a liability or competitive advantage, subtracting from or adding to the overall rating.
- Fixed Rating Thresholds: Medalist Ratings will be determined by a simple combination of fundamental pillar ratings and a Medalist Rating Price Score, increasing stability by eliminating a forced distribution of ratings that caused ratings to change based on updates to other funds.
The ratings scale will remain a five-tier system: Gold, Silver, Bronze, Neutral, and Negative. Analyst input is central, with algorithm-generated pillars activated only when an analyst rating is not available.
"Our updated methodology and approach reinforce the value of human expertise combined with data-driven rigor, resulting in assessments that are deeply informed by real-world experience," Schumacher said.
1 Fund Manager Successful Experience: Tenure-weighted average of the successful manager experience values for the managers listed on the fund. The successful manager experience value for each manager is the total number of months over the past 10 years in which a manager achieved a positive gross-of-fee excess return over the category index, minus the number of months with negative ones. |
Additional Resources
- Morningstar Medalist Rating Methodology
- An explainer article on the methodology update is available on Morningstar.com.
- A detailed FAQ document addresses common questions about Morningstar's Medalist Rating methodology.
- Morningstar will host a client webinar to walk through the update and answer inquiries.
About Morningstar, Inc.
Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment insights in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The Company offers an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers and owners, retirement plan providers and sponsors, institutional investors in the debt and private capital markets, and alliances and redistributors. Morningstar provides data and research insights on a wide range of investment offerings, including managed investment products, publicly listed companies, private capital markets, debt securities, and real-time global market data. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiaries, with approximately $369 billion in AUMA as of Sept. 30, 2025. The Company operates through wholly-owned subsidiaries in 32 countries. For more information, visit www.morningstar.com/company. Follow Morningstar on X @MorningstarInc.
Morningstar's Manager Research Group
Morningstar's Manager Research Group consists of various wholly owned subsidiaries of Morningstar, Inc. including, but not limited to, Morningstar Research Services LLC. Morningstar Manager Research provides independent, fundamental analysis on managed investment strategies. Morningstar views are expressed in the form of Morningstar Medalist Ratings, which are derived through research of three key fundamental pillars—People, Process, and Parent, and a quantitative assessment of costs in the form of the Medalist Rating Price Score. The Morningstar Medalist Rating is the summary expression of Morningstar's forward-looking analysis of investment strategies as offered via specific vehicles using a rating scale of Gold, Silver, Bronze, Neutral, and Negative. A global research team issues detailed research reports on strategies that span vehicle, asset class, and geography.
Medalist Ratings are not statements of fact, nor are they credit or risk ratings, and should not be used as the sole basis for investment decisions. A Medalist Rating is not intended to be nor is a guarantee of future performance. This press release is for informational purposes only; references to securities should not be considered an offer or solicitation to buy or sell the securities.
©2025 Morningstar, Inc. All rights reserved.
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