The investment research firm said its new project seeks to lower costs for the industry and improve outcomes for investors.

The Chicago-headquartered firm has launched the Morningstar Open Indexes Project, offering firms the ability to benchmark their investments against all of its 100+ global equity indexes for free.

The project is aimed at asset managers, advisors, asset owners and other financial services firms. The indexes on offer include equity benchmarks across sectors, styles, and regions. Participants will receive price return, total return, net return, and month-end constituent data for the indexes.

“Fund investors today are paying substantially lower fees than when we opened our doors more than 30 years ago. One industry cost that’s moving in the opposite direction is the fee charged for indexes used to measure and compare relative investment performance,” said Joe Mansueto, chairman and chief executive of Morningstar.

“This benchmarking process is extremely important. But only a handful of index providers control the vast majority of the market, and those providers are using their power to dramatically increase fees.”

Morningstar Global Equity Indexes include both traditional beta and strategic beta benchmarking. Covering 45 countries and 21 regions, they span global, developed, and emerging markets for 97 per cent of the investable universe by market capitalisation, the firm said.