Financial portfolio management system and method

• US 8,219,473 B2
• Filed: 11/13/2009
• Issued: 07/10/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 07/10/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Morningstar Incorporated
• Original Assignee: ByAllAccounts, Incorporated (Morningstar Incorporated)
• Inventors: Gardner, L. Patrick, Dickau, Ellen L., Dickau, Martin, Carney, James M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Nga B.
• Application Number:
  US12/618,253
• Publication Number:
  US 20100088210A1
• Time in Patent Office: 970 Days
• Field of Search: 705/35, 705/36, 705/37, 705/38
• US Class Current: 705/35
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/03 Credit; Loans; Processing thereof
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/06 Asset management; Financial planning or analysis

Abstract

A financial portfolio management system operable in a network environment can be configured to gather financial information from a plurality of sources over an electronic network and intelligently aggregate the information into a financial portfolio viewable by a client. The client can determine which accounts should be included in the portfolio. The system uses web crawling, parsing, or spidering technology to update the portfolio information. The system provides one platform that conveys financial information from a variety of accounts held at several different financial institutions.

Claims

1. A system for retrieving and displaying financial information, comprising:

a central processing unit (CPU); and

a storage device coupled to the CPU and having stored there information for configuring the CPU to;

retrieve financial information of a customer by connecting over a network to each of two or more unrelated financial institutions, the retrieving including automatically performing a login procedure for at least one of the two or more unrelated financial institutions and also including downloading financial information from each of the two or more unrelated financial institutions, at least one of the two or more unrelated financial institutions storing its financial information in a data format different than at least one other of two or more unrelated financial institutions stores its financial information;

for each of two or more unrelated financial institutions, normalize the retrieved financial information into a single normalized data format by assigning each piece of the customer'"'"'s retrieved financial information to a different position in a stored data model;

generate a financial portfolio by aggregating financial information, the aggregating including applying at least one language-processing technique to address one or more missing pieces of financial information; and

display at least some of the generated financial portfolio.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the at least one language-processing technique comprises a context-free analysis or a context-sensitive analysis.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the network is the Internet and wherein the retrieving includes the use of a secure communication protocol.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the retrieving includes at least one of web crawling, parsing, and spidering technology.

5. The system of claim 1 further comprising receipt of a communication from a client computer to initiate the display of at least some of the generated financial portfolio.

6. The system of claim 5 wherein displaying includes communicating the at least some of the generated financial portfolio to the client computer for display to the customer as text and graphics.

7. The system of claim 5 wherein displaying includes communicating the at least some of the generated financial portfolio to the client computer for display to the customer as text and graphics.

8. A computer-readable medium storing software code representing instructions that when executed by a computing system cause the computing system to perform a method of retrieving and displaying financial information, the method comprising:

retrieving financial information of a customer by connecting over a network to each of two or more unrelated financial institutions, the retrieving including automatically performing a login procedure for at least one of the two or more unrelated financial institutions and also including downloading financial information from each of the two or more unrelated financial institutions, at least one of the two or more unrelated financial institutions storing its financial information in a data format different than at least one other of two or more unrelated financial institutions stores its financial information;

for each of the two or more unrelated financial institutions, normalizing the retrieved financial information into a single normalized data format by assigning each piece of the customer'"'"'s retrieved financial information to a different position in a stored data model;

generating a financial portfolio by aggregating financial information, the aggregating including applying at least one language-processing technique to address one or more missing pieces of financial information; and

displaying at least some of the generated financial portfolio.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the at least one language-processing technique comprises a context-free analysis or a context-sensitive analysis.

10. The method of claim 8 wherein the network is the Internet and wherein the retrieving step includes the use of a secure communication protocol.

11. The method of claim 8 wherein the retrieving step includes at least one of web crawling, parsing, and spidering technology.

12. The method of claim 8 further comprising receiving a communication from the computing system to initiate the displaying.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein the displaying step includes communicating the at least some of the generated financial portfolio to the computing system for display to the customer as text and graphics.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein the displaying step includes communicating the at least some of the generated financial portfolio to the computing system.