Determining commercial share of wallet

• US 8,086,509 B2
• Filed: 08/02/2006
• Issued: 12/27/2011
• 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, Lyon, Charles Christopher, Phelan, Robert E., Ruterman, Jon Kevin, Turner, Geraldine A., Yuan, Chao M., Biswas, Arnab
• Primary Examiner(s): Hammond, III, Thomas M
• Application Number:
  US11/497,563
• Publication Number:
  US 20070067209A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,973 Days
• Field of Search: 705 35- 40
• US Class Current: 705/35
• 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:

obtaining financial statement data of the company;

modeling, by a computer-based system programmed to estimate spend capacity of a company comprising a computer processor and a tangible memory, industry spending patterns using individual corporate data and aggregate corporate data, including financial statement data;

calculating, by the computer-based system, total known business spending of the company;

determining, by the computer-based system, the total operating expenses of the company;

identifying, by the computer-based system, cardable operating expenses of the company from the total operating expenses of the company; and

estimating, by the computer-based system, a commercial size of spending wallet of the company based on, at least, known financial statement data of the company, total known business spending of the company, trade credit data and the model of industry spending patterns, wherein the commercial size of spending wallet comprises the company'"'"'s cost of goods sold plus the cardable operating expenses of the company, wherein the payment instrument is associated with a transaction account, and wherein the model of industry spending patterns is used to infer financial statement data and spending data that is not known.

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

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the obtaining comprises obtaining financial statement data from an Internal Revenue Service database.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

estimating a share of wallet for a particular financial institution.

5. A system comprising:

a computer processor for estimating spend capacity of a company; and

a tangible, non-transitory computer-usable storage medium in communication with the processor, the tangible computer-usable storage medium for storing a plurality of processing instructions for directing the processor to;

obtain financial statement data of the company;

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

calculate, by the processor, total known business spending of the company;

determine, by the processor, the total operating expenses of the company;

identify, by the processor, cardable operating expenses of the company from the total operating expenses of the company; and

estimate, by the processor, a commercial size of spending wallet of the company based on, at least, known financial statement data of the company, total known business spending of the company, trade credit data and the model of industry spending patterns, wherein the commercial size of spending wallet comprises the company'"'"'s cost of goods sold plus the cardable operating expenses of the company, wherein the payment instrument is associated with a transaction account, and wherein the model of industry spending patterns is used to infer financial statement data and spending data that is not known.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the obtain financial statement data includes directing the processor to obtain financial statement data from a database of commercially-underwritten businesses.

7. The system of claim 5, wherein the obtain financial statement data includes directing the processor to obtain financial statement data from an Internal Revenue Service database.

8. The system of claim 5, further comprising estimate a share of wallet for a particular financial institution.

9. An article of manufacture including a non-transitory computer readable medium having instructions stored thereon that, in response to execution by a computing device for estimating spend capacity of a company, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:

obtaining financial statement data of the company;

modeling, by the computing device, industry spending patterns using individual corporate data and aggregate corporate data, including financial statement data;

calculating, by the computing device total known business spending of the company;

determining, by the computing device, the total operating expenses of the company;

identifying, by the computing device, cardable operating expenses of the company from the total operating expenses of the company; and

estimating, by the computing device, a commercial size of spending wallet of the company based on, at least, known financial statement data of the company, total known business spending of the company, trade credit data and the model of industry spending patterns, wherein the commercial size of spending wallet comprises the company'"'"'s cost of goods sold plus the cardable operating expenses of the company, wherein the payment instrument is associated with a transaction account, and wherein the model of industry spending patterns is used to infer financial statement data and spending data that is not known.

10. The article of manufacture of claim 9, further comprising obtaining financial statement data from a database of commercially-underwritten businesses.

11. The article of manufacture of claim 9, further comprising obtaining financial statement data from an Internal Revenue Service database.

12. The article of manufacture of claim 9, further comprising estimating a share of wallet for a particular financial institution.