Determining commercial share of wallet

• US 20070067209A1
• Filed: 08/02/2006
• Published: 03/22/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 10/29/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc. (American Express Company)
• Original Assignee: American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc. (American Express Company)
• Inventors: Haggerty, Kathleen, Yuan, Chao, Turner, Geraldine, Lyon, Charles, Phelan, Robert, Ruterman, Jon
• Granted Patent: US 8,086,509 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/10
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0202 Market predictions or forecasting for commercial activities
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/08 Insurance

Abstract

Commercial size of spending wallet (“SoSW”) is the total business spend of a business including cash but excluding bartered items. Commercial share of wallet (“SoW”) is the portion of the spending wallet that is captured by a particular financial company. Commercial SoW is a modeling approach that utilizes various data sources to provide outputs that describe a company'"'"'s spend capacity. These outputs can be appended to data profiles of customers and prospects and can be utilized to support decisions involving prospecting, new account evaluation, and customer management across the lifecycle. Company financial statements are utilized to identify and calculate total business spend of a company that could be transacted using a commercial credit card. A spend-like regression model may then be developed to estimate annual commercial SoSW value for customers and prospects within a credit network.

Claims

1. A method of estimating spend capacity of a company, comprising:

(a) obtaining financial statement data of the company;

(b) modeling industry spending patterns using individual and aggregate corporate data, including financial statement data;

(c) calculating total business spend of the company; and

(d) estimating a commercial size of spending wallet of the company based on financial statement data of the company, total business spend of the company, and the model of industry spending patterns.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said step (a) comprises obtaining financial statement data from a database of commercially-underwritten businesses.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said step (a) comprises obtaining financial statement data from an Internal Revenue Service database.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said step (c) comprises adding a cost of goods sold by the company to cardable operating expenses of the company.

5. The method of claim of claim 1, wherein said step (d) comprises adding a cost of goods sold by the company to the product of total operating expenses of the company and a cardable operating expenses ratio, wherein the cardable operating expenses ratio is the percentage of total operating expenses of the company that is cardable.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

(e) estimating a share of wallet for a particular financial institution.

7. A system for estimating spend capacity of a company, comprising:

a processor; and

a memory in communication with the processor for storing a plurality of processing instructions for directing the processor to;

obtain financial statement data of the company;

model industry spending patterns using individual and aggregate corporate data, including financial statement data;

calculate total business spend of the company; and

estimate a commercial size of spending wallet of the company based on financial statement data of the company, total business spend of the company, and the model of industry spending patterns.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the instructions for directing the processor to obtain financial statement data include instructions for directing the processor to obtain financial statement data from a database of commercially-underwritten businesses.

9. The system of claim 7, wherein the instructions for directing the processor to obtain financial statement data include instructions for directing the processor to obtain financial statement data from an Internal Revenue Service database.

10. The system of claim 7, wherein the instructions for directing the processor to calculate total business spend of the company include instructions for directing the processor to:

add a cost of goods sold by the company to cardable operating expenses of the company.

11. The system of claim 7, wherein the instructions for directing the processor to estimate commercial size of spending wallet include instructions for directing the processor to:

add a cost of goods sold by the company to the product of total operating expenses of the company and a cardable operating expenses ratio, wherein the cardable operating expenses ratio is the percentage of total operating expenses of the company that is cardable.

12. The system of claim 7, further comprising instructions for directing the processor to:

estimate a share of wallet for a particular financial institution.

13. A computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having control logic stored therein for causing a computer to estimate spend capacity of a company, said control logic comprising:

first computer readable program code means for causing the computer to obtain financial statement data of the company;

second computer readable program code means for causing the computer to model industry spending patterns using individual and aggregate corporate data, including financial statement data;

third computer readable program code means for causing the computer to calculate total business spend of the company; and

fourth computer readable program code means for causing the computer to estimate a commercial size of spending wallet of the company based on financial statement data of the company, total business spend of the company, and the model of industry spending patterns.

14. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein the first computer readable program code means comprises fifth computer readable program code means for causing the computer to obtain financial statement data from a database of commercially-underwritten businesses.

15. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein the first computer readable program code means comprises fifth computer readable program code means for causing the computer to obtain financial statement data from an Internal Revenue Service database.

16. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein the third computer readable program code means includes fifth computer readable program code means for causing the computer to:

add a cost of goods sold by the company to cardable operating expenses of the company.

17. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein the fourth computer readable program codes means includes fifth computer readable program code means for causing the computer to:

add a cost of goods sold by the company to the product of total operating expenses of the company and a cardable operating expenses ratio, wherein the cardable operating expenses ratio is the percentage of total operating expenses of the company that is cardable.

18. The computer program product of claim 13, further comprising:

fifth computer readable program code means for causing the computer to estimate a share of wallet for a particular financial institution.