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Launch an Investment Fund Screener Without Building a Data Pipeline

Nancy Dillon Avatar

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4 minutes read

A fund screener is one of the most valuable features you can add to a financial platform. It’s also one of the most expensive and time-consuming to build. 

To build a fund screener that clients actually want to use, you need access to thousands of funds, each with ratings, risk scores, fees, performance history, asset allocation, and sustainability data. Beyond just access, you also need data that is structured, reliable and updated regularly.

Most teams discover this problem after they’ve already committed to building the feature. What looked like a few weeks of frontend work turns into months of API contracts, authentication headaches, data mapping, and ongoing maintenance. 

But what if the data problem is already solved?

That’s where the Highcharts Morningstar data connector comes in. It handles all the backend plumbing so your team can focus on building the product experience. 

Pair the connector with Highcharts and you can go from pure Morningstar data to a fully interactive fund screener in days, not months.

Trusted data, out of the box

A fund screener lives or dies on the quality of its underlying data. To build one that finance professionals and clients actually trust, you need coverage that goes beyond basic price data.

The Morningstar Investment Screener connector gives you access to Morningstar’s full investment universe (over 65,000 funds) filterable across dozens of data points including asset class, Morningstar rating, risk score, one-year return, fee percentage, sustainability rating, region, and category.

This is the same, top-quality Morningstar data that wealth managers and financial advisors rely on to make recommendations and data your users will immediately trust when they see it.

How the connector works

The connector handles the authentication, data mapping, and API integration automatically. Just configure your Morningstar credentials once, and the data flows directly into your front-end layer, structured, reliable, and ready to visualize.

Since your data never passes through Highcharts’ servers, security, privacy, and regulatory compliance stay entirely within your infrastructure.

For more technical information about the data connector, check out our Morningstar Data Connector documentation.

What you else can build

The Fund Screener is just the starting point. Once a user finds a fund they’re interested in, the next logical step is a detailed fund profile. That’s where the Security Details connector picks up.

From the screener, a user can select a fund to see a profile summary.

At the top, a sector breakdown chart shows how the fund is distributed across industries. Alongside it, calendar year returns from 2016 through 2025 give a long view on performance, and a stock style grid places the fund in its category at a glance. Below that, trailing returns compare the fund against its benchmark across multiple time periods, and an asset allocation chart shows the split between stocks, bonds, cash, and other assets.

Further down, a holdings table lists the top securities by portfolio weight alongside market value and sector. A bubble chart visualizes those same holdings by weight and index position. A regional breakdown shows geographic exposure by country.

One connector powers all of it. The single exception is the Performance Trends chart at the bottom that uses the Time Series connector to track price history over a full date range with navigator and zoom controls. A complete fund profile typically combines both, each feeding the relevant components in a single synchronized view through Highcharts Dashboards.

This is the kind of investment research experience that typically takes months to build from scratch. With the Security Details connector handling the data layer, most teams have a complete fund profile running with real Morningstar data in days.

Getting started

The fund profile is one of five production-ready use cases built on the Morningstar connector library. Most teams start here as the natural next step after building a fund screener, and it’s where investors spend the most time making decisions.

To build it, you’ll need a Highcharts Partner Data License and a Morningstar Direct Web Services account. The license includes the connector, Highcharts Stock and Dashboards for one SaaS or web app, unlimited developer seats, and Advantage Plus support, including a dedicated Support Engineer who will guide you through implementation.

Have questions about your specific use case or want to see the connector in action? Reach out to our team to get started.

Highcharts has been trusted by financial institutions for 15 years, including 80% of Fortune 100 companies. The Morningstar partnership is built on that same foundation of reliability, security, and dedicated support.

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