PERSONAL FINANCE INTEGRATION SYSTEM AND METHOD

• US 20110087575A1
• Filed: 12/13/2010
• Published: 04/14/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 06/18/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Consumerinfo.com Incorporated (Experian plc)
• Original Assignee: Consumerinfo.com Incorporated (Experian plc)
• Inventors: DeBie, Tod, Burger, Michael
• Granted Patent: US 8,355,967 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• 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 40/02 Banking, e.g. interest calculation or account maintenance credit or loans G06Q40/03
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/12 Accounting

Abstract

An integration device retrieves credit reports, and/or other financial data that is available from one or more credit sources, for consumers and extracts financial account information from the credit reports. The integration device may then format and/or translates the account information into a format that is usable by a particular consumer'"'"'s personal finance software and communicates the account information to the personal finance software. Accordingly, the personal finance software is provided with information regarding each of a plurality of financial accounts that are associated with the consumer so that the account information may be populated in the personal finance software with minimal effort by the consumer.

Claims

1. A system for providing financial account data for auto-population in an existing, widely-used personal finance software application used by a consumer, the system comprising:

one or more computer processors configured to implement;

an account detection module configured to;

retrieve credit information associated with a consumer from one or more credit bureaus, wherein the credit information identifies one or more credit accounts of the consumer;

detect a plurality of financial accounts indicated in the credit information;

detect one or more account rules associated with the consumer indicating which of the financial accounts indicated in the credit information should be included in financial account data for transmission to the existing, widely-used personal finance software application; and

extract, from the credit information, financial account data matching the account rules; and

a personal finance software integration module configured to generate a data file comprising the extracted financial account data for transmission to the existing, widely-used personal finance software application of the consumer, wherein the data file comprises information regarding the indicated financial accounts in a format that is usable by the existing, widely-used personal finance software application in order to add the financial accounts into the existing, widely used personal finance software application.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the personal finance software application executes on a server in communication with a browser executing on a consumer computing device.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the personal finance software executes on a consumer computing device.

4. The system of claim 1, further comprising a de-dupe module that is configured to locate and remove duplicate information in the financial account information.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the account detection module is configured to periodically retrieve the credit information associated with the consumer.

6. The system of claim 1, further comprising an account summary interface configured to accept from the consumer an indication of the one or more account rules for use by the account detection module.

9. The system of claim 6, wherein the one or more processors are maintained by an entity other than the consumer.

7. A system for providing to a consumer integrated financial account data in a format for population in an existing, widely-used personal finance software application, the system comprising:

one or more computer processors configured to implement;

an account detection module configured to;

retrieve credit and debit information associated with a consumer from a credit/debit data integration service configured to receive, relative to the consumer, both credit data from a credit bureau identifying the credit accounts of the consumer as well as debit data from banks identifying the debit accounts of the consumer;

detect one or more financial accounts indicated in the credit and debit information;

detect one or more account rules indicating which of the financial accounts indicated in the credit and debit information should be included in financial account data for transmission to the consumer for use in the existing, widely-used personal finance software application; and

extract, from the credit and debit information, financial account data in accordance with the account rules; and

a personal finance software integration module configured to generate a data file comprising the extracted account data for transmission to the consumer, the data file comprising information regarding the indicated financial accounts in a format that is usable by an existing, widely-used personal finance software application of the consumer.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the financial accounts comprise one or more of credit card, checking, saving, loan, investment, and specialty store credit accounts.

10. The system of claim 7, wherein:

the account detection module is further configured to retrieve credit and debit information regarding credit and debit accounts of two consumers; and

the personal finance software integration module is further configured to generate the data file comprising the extracted account data for the two consumers.

11. A method of providing financial account information to a personal finance software application for auto-population in an existing, widely-used personal finance software application provided by a third party, the method comprising:

receiving, at a computing device comprising at least one processor, consumer information identifying a consumer, the consumer information comprising at least one of the consumer'"'"'s name, social security number, or residence address;

transmitting, from the computing device, at least some of the consumer information to a credit data service configured to access credit data of the consumer;

receiving, at the computing device, credit information associated with the consumer from the credit data service, wherein the credit information is in a first data format;

detecting, by the computing device, account information associated with one or more financial accounts in the received credit information;

determining, by the computing device, a second data format different from the first format that is readable by the personal finance software application in order to populate the personal finance software application with account information from at least some of the detected financial accounts;

generating by the computing device a data structure in the second data format and including the detected account information for the at least some of the detected financial accounts, wherein the extracted account information comprises at least an account name for each of the at least some of the detected financial accounts; and

providing the data structure in the second data format to the personal finance software application.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

displaying to the consumer the data structure in the second data format including the detected account information; and

receiving from the consumer an indication of changes to the account information in the data structure in the second data format;

wherein providing the data structure in the second data format to the personal finance software application comprises providing the data structure in the second data format including the changes from the consumer to the account information.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

detecting, by the computing device, account rules that indicate which of the account information is to be auto-populated into the personal finance software; and

extracting, by the computing device, corresponding to the account rules, the account information associated with the detected one or more financial accounts from the credit information in the first format;

extracted corresponding to the account rules.

14. The computerized method of claim 13, wherein at least one of the rules indicates one or more account types.

15. The computerized method of claim 13, wherein detecting the account rules comprises receiving from the consumer an electronic indication of one or more account rules.

16. A computer-readable storage medium containing a set of instructions that, in response to execution by a computing device, causes the computing device to perform operations comprising:

receiving at the computing device consumer information identifying a consumer, the consumer information comprising at least one of a consumer'"'"'s name, social security number, and residence address;

transmitting from the computing device at least some of the consumer information to a credit data service comprising a personal credit account integration service which receives, relative to the consumer, credit data comprising data from a credit bureau identifying the credit accounts of the consumer;

accessing by the computing device account rules indicating which credit information associated with the credit accounts of the consumer is to be auto-populated into an existing, widely-used personal finance software;

receiving at the computing device from the credit data service credit information comprising a plurality of data items associated with each of one or more financial accounts of the consumer, the received credit information being in accordance with the transmitted account rules, wherein the received credit information is in a first format;

determining by the computing device a second data format different from the first format that is readable by the personal finance software in order to populate the personal finance software with the received credit information;

generating by the computing device a data structure in the second data format and including the received credit information, wherein the received credit information comprises at least an account name for each of financial accounts included in the received credit information; and

providing the data structure in the second data format to the personal finance software application.

17. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the account rules indicate at least one of:

account information from which financial accounts are to be auto-populated into the existing, widely-used personal finance software and information about which data items from the account information are to be auto-populated into the existing, widely-used personal finance software.

18. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the personal finance software application executes on a server in communication with a browser executing on a consumer computing device.

19. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the personal finance software executes on a consumer computing device.

20. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the method further comprises receiving information from the consumer computing device disputing account information extracted from the credit report.