Morningstar Is Balancing Business Trips With Meetings in the Metaverse

Analysts and advisors at Morningstar could soon be wearing virtual reality headsets instead of traveling to meetings in the future, as growing numbers of financial services companies enter the metaverse.

Another company, Accenture, ordered 60,000 Oculus Quest 2 headsets in October last year for its trainees who weren’t able to meet in person. It also created a virtual office environment called the Nth Floor. Fidelity Investments, meanwhile, has been looking into the effectiveness of training in virtual reality, after a pilot program involving 140 employees.

After two years of digital experimentation, a clear pandemic legacy is emerging.

And banking overall continues to be the most cautious sector when reopening offices. American Express Global Business Travel has highlighted how two customers in the sector, which it didn’t name, hadn’t yet fully reopened their buildings — their travel had resumed to just 24 percent and 33 percent in total transaction volume for the second quarter, compared to the same period in 2019, it revealed during its investor day on Tuesday. Another banking client that had reopened offices was at 66 percent of pre-pandemic travel spend.

Corporate travel agencies, as well as hotels and airlines, should be paying attention to Chicago-headquartered Morningstar’s next moves. It has encouraged its own trainees to use virtual reality, allowing them to expense the technology if they sign up to test it out and provide feedback, and is factoring in VIP metaverse experiences at its hybrid 2022 investor conference at Chicago's McCormick Place convention center on May 16-18.

The acceleration in new technologies won't be stopping with the end of mask mandates, and Morningstar, which has 8,500 employees, has been working closely with VR specialist Mesmerise on developing virtual and augmented reality experiences at its conferences since 2017. The company, found