Morningstar Canada has made it easier for financial advisors to track F-class mutual funds.

The firm says its Morningstar Advisor Workstation, a Web-based investment research platform for advisors, now includes data on 835 F-class funds offered by 29 different companies.

F-class funds are low-fee versions of mass-market load mutual funds. They are sold to investors primarily by investment advisors and financial planners who charge their clients on an assets-under-management basis rather than by the individual transaction.

F-class funds typically have management expense ratios that are a full percentage point or more lower than conventional mutual funds. With an F-class fund, the sponsoring company effectively has removed the advice portion of the fund’s MER; the investor pays that fee directly to his or her advisor.

Morningstar says its F-series data is the most comprehensive source of information on these funds in the Canadian fund measurement industry. It is available as an optional data segment within the Research module of Advisor Workstation.

Morningstar’s F-class fund database includes performance, net asset values, MERs, risk statistics, tax analysis, minimum purchase amounts, sales status and other information fields.

Unlike Morningstar’s main fund database, which provides data going back as far as 25 years, the F-class data goes back to September 2000. However, relevant longer-term information based on an F-class fund’s underlying load-fund are provided, such as Morningstar Ratings, manager tenure, investment style, portfolio turnover, top 15 holdings and sector weightings.