Financial portfolio management system and method

• US 8,473,397 B2
• Filed: 06/05/2012
• Issued: 06/25/2013
• 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:
  US13/488,913
• Publication Number:
  US 20120265708A1
• Time in Patent Office: 385 Days
• Field of Search: 705/35, 705/36, 705/37, 705/36.R
• US Class Current: 705/36.R
• 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 manipulating 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, 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; and

generate a financial portfolio by aggregating financial information.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the aggregating comprises applying at least one language-processing technique to address one or more missing pieces of financial information.

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

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the aggregating comprises identifying and interpreting the retrieved financial information.

5. The system of claim 2 wherein the aggregating further comprises identifying and interpreting the retrieved financial information and the addressed one or more pieces of financial information.

6. The system of claim 1 wherein the aggregating comprises combining two or more pieces of financial information into a single piece of financial information.

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

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

9. The system of claim 1 wherein the retrieving includes automatically performing a login procedure for at least one of the two or more unrelated financial institutions and downloading information from each of the two or more unrelated financial institutions.

10. The system of claim 1 further configuring the CPU to receive a communication from a client computer to initiate a display of at least some of the generated financial portfolio.

11. The system of claim 7 further configuring the CPU to communicate the at least some of the generated financial portfolio to the client computer for display to a client as text and graphics.

12. 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 manipulating 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, 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; and

generating a financial portfolio by aggregating financial information.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 12 wherein the aggregating step comprises applying at least one language-processing technique to address one or more missing pieces of financial information.

14. The system of claim 13 wherein the at least one language-processing technique comprises a context-free analysis or a context-sensitive analysis.

15. The system of claim 12 wherein the aggregating step comprises identifying and interpreting the retrieved financial information.

16. The system of claim 13 wherein the aggregating step further comprises identifying and interpreting the retrieved financial information and the addressed one or more pieces of financial information.

17. The system of claim 12 wherein the aggregating step comprises combining two or more pieces of financial information into a single piece of financial information.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 12 wherein the network is the Internet and wherein the retrieving step includes the use of a secure communication protocol.

19. The computer-readable medium of claim 12 wherein the retrieving step includes at least one of web crawling, parsing, and spidering technology.

20. The computer-readable medium of claim 12 wherein the retrieving step includes automatically performing a login procedure for at least one of the two or more unrelated financial institutions and downloading information from each of the two or more unrelated financial institutions.

21. The computer-readable medium of claim 12 wherein the method further comprises receiving a communication from a client'"'"'s computer to initiate the displaying.

22. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein the method further comprises communicating the at least some of the generated financial portfolio to the client'"'"'s computer for display to a client as text and graphics.

23. A system for manipulating 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, 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; and

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

24. The system of claim 23 wherein the normalizing includes 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.

25. The system of claim 23 wherein the at least one language-processing technique comprises a context-free analysis or a context-sensitive analysis.

26. The system of claim 23 wherein the aggregating further comprises identifying and interpreting at least one of the retrieved financial information and the addressed one or more pieces of financial information.

27. The system of claim 23 wherein the aggregating further comprises combining two or more pieces of financial information into a single piece of financial information.

28. The system of claim 23 wherein the network is the Internet and wherein the retrieving includes the use of a secure communication protocol.

29. The system of claim 23 wherein the retrieving includes at least one of web crawling, parsing, and spidering technology.

30. The system of claim 23 wherein the retrieving includes automatically performing a login procedure for at least one of the two or more unrelated financial institutions and downloading information from each of the two or more unrelated financial institutions.

31. The system of claim 23 further configuring the CPU to receive a communication from a client computer to initiate a display of at least some of the generated financial portfolio.

32. The system of claim 23 further configuring the CPU to communicate the at least some of the generated financial portfolio to the client computer for display to a client as text and graphics.