Former Morningstar chief research and investment officer, Dan Kemp, has launched an investment consultancy and research platform aimed at bringing institutional-grade investment capabilities to advice firms.

The new proposition, Portfolio Thinking, looks to combine strategic consultancy, governance support, and AI-enabled research to help firms build and maintain investment offerings at scale.

Aiming to bridge the gap between boutique advice and institutional scale, Portfolio Thinking has been designed to enable advice firms, family offices and institutions to provide robust and disciplined investment propositions without the overheads of an in-house investment team.

Firms looking for a more comprehensive solution will be able to utilise Portfolio Thinking CIO for a fully outsourced, white-labelled investment engine.

Portfolio Thinking is seeking to combine human expertise with supervised AI and focus on the decisions that determine long-term outcomes, such as portfolio construction, valuation discipline, and behaviour through market cycles.

Its services range from strategic consultancy for investment committees to fully white-labelled investment propositions designed to integrate into existing practices.

Furthermore, its AI-enabled research offering will be launching later this year, separating valuation mathematics from narrative to provide scalable, probability-based equity valuation, fund analysis and investment theses.

Portfolio Thinking has been founded by Dan Kemp, who led Morningstar’s Research and Investment teams and oversaw its Investment Management business.

“Many firms face a false choice between boutique advice and institutional capability,” said Kemp.

“Portfolio Thinking exists to remove that trade-off, combining human judgment, valuation discipline and behavioural insight with the scale and efficiency of supervised AI.

“Investing success is not defined by short-term performance or market forecasts. It’s defined by whether portfolios are built to survive uncertainty and whether decision-makers have the discipline to stay the course. That’s where Portfolio Thinking adds value.”

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