The present invention relates generally to computerized systems and methods for assisting in the sale of financial products and, more particularly, to a computer-based tool for visualizing the impact of selective financial products on retirement planning in a sales demonstration.
Computer-based retirement planning systems and methods have been available to financial planners, investment managers, and individuals for some time. Previously available software systems and tools include sophisticated programs which consider various types of retirement income sources, projections of retirement expenses, and other factors. These systems are available as free standing applications for use on individual computers, and in online versions which can be accessed by numerous computer users.
With existing retirement planning systems, users generally provide comprehensive information as part of creating a retirement plan. Gathering this comprehensive information about the user tends to be time intensive, but this detailed and comprehensive approach is important for adequate planning to assure the availability of sufficient resources for retirement. Notwithstanding advantages of spending adequate time to create a detailed retirement plan using one of these sophisticated computer systems, a different approach is necessary in a sales demonstration. In a sales environment, the potential customer will likely not have the patience for salespersons spending significant time gathering information. There exists a need for a sales demonstration tool that quickly shows the positive impact of various financial products offered for sale in a manner the potential customer can easily understand.
One aspect to the present invention is a computer-based sales tool for financial products that has features which are not available from existing financial planning tools. In its preferred embodiments, the tool is intended for use by financial advisors and other professionals who assist individual customers in planning activities. The sales tool allows these professionals to more easily explain differences among financial products, such as tax efficiency, income preservation, guaranteed income, etc., to a client. Typically, the sales tool is configured to visually illustrate the impact of actual financial products offered by insurance companies, investment houses or other institutions in the financial services industry based on actual data, such as historical rate of returns, actuarial data, and/or product/rider specific tables. This means that differentiating features of proprietary financial products can be visualized by the client, thereby showing the impact and potential value of these features. The sales tool's ability to model actual products with proprietary features is a key distinction from existing financial calculators that use “textbook” or “vanilla” products to make projections.
According to another aspect, this disclosure provides a computerized system. The computerized system may include a customer profile calibration module, a product selection module, and a visualization module in some embodiments. The customer profile calibration module may be configured to allow selection of one or more customer parameters. The product selection module may be configured to allow selection of a financial product. The visualization module may be configured to graphically display an impact of the selected financial product on one or more of the selected customer parameters based on actual historical data over a specified time period.
The customer profile calibration module may be further configured to allow an adjustment of the one or more of the selected customer parameters and the specified time period. The visualization module may be further configured to automatically display an adjusted impact of the selected financial product on the selected one or more customer parameters, based on one or more adjusted customer parameters.
According to a further aspect, this disclosure provides a computerized system including one or more computing devices that include a memory and a processor. The memory has program code stored therein. The processor may be in communication with the memory, and may carry out instructions in accordance with the stored program code, wherein the program code, when executed by the processor, causes the processor to perform operations comprising: allowing selection of one or more customer parameters; allowing selection of a financial product; and graphically displaying an impact of the selected financial product on one or more of the selected customer parameters based on actual historical data over a specified time period.
According to yet a further aspect, the disclosure provides a computerized system including a memory having program code thereon. The memory has machine-executable code stored thereon that causes a processor to generate a user interface on a display, such as on a touch screen display. In embodiments using a touch screen display, a plurality of profile interface elements may be provided and at least one product interface element. Each of the plurality of profile interface elements may be associated with a respective profile parameter. The at least one product interface element may be associated with a financial product. When the code executes, it may cause the processor to: receive a selection of one of the plurality of profile interface elements to select the respective profile parameter; receive a selection of the at least one product interface element to select the financial product; and, in response to a user selecting an interface element, graphically display an impact of the selected financial product on the plurality of customer profile parameters based on actual historical data over a specified time period.
Certain embodiments of the sales tool do not require a comprehensive data gathering approach; instead, the sales tool allows a client to understand the impact of various financial products using minimal information inputted into the system. The input parameters can be easily varied to perform interactive “what if” scenarios. For example, the client could adjust the retirement age or annuity funding amount and immediately visualize the impact in asset base or future income stream. This allows the client to identify potential short falls in expected income, and see the impact of actual financial products in response to the projected short falls. Embodiments of the sales tool could be used to model a range of financial products, including annuities, long term care insurance, and life insurance.
Additional features and advantages of the subject system and method will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon consideration of the following detailed materials which form part of this provisional application.
The present disclosure will be described hereafter with reference to the attached drawings which are given as non-limiting examples only, in which:
While the concepts of the present disclosure are susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific exemplary embodiments thereof have been shown by way of example in the drawings and will herein be described in detail. It should be understood, however, that there is no intent to limit the concepts of the present disclosure to the particular forms disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the disclosure.
This disclosure relates generally to a computerized system and method for graphically or visually showing the impact of selective financial products being offered in a sales demonstration. During a sales demonstration, it is desirable to quickly show the potential impact of financial products being offered on retirement planning with relatively small amount of input data needing to be entered about the potential customer. In one aspect, this disclosure provides a computerized tool that allows potential customers to immediately visualize the potential impact of financial products being offered on retirement planning, such as increased retirement income or assets, based on historical performance of the actual products being offered. Rather than a using a comprehensive set of parameters regarding the individual's financial health and retirement goals, which could take a substantial time to input, one embodiment of the tool allows a small number of parameters to be inputted. These parameters could be easily changed so the customer can quickly perform “what if” scenarios as to potential impacts of the parameters on retirement planning. The graphical representation allows the potential customer to focus attention on potential gaps that may exist without having the financial products being offered, thereby quickly showing the value of these products in a manner the customer can easily understand. Although the sales tool will be generally discussed below with regard to showing the impact of various annuity products offered for sale, embodiments are also contemplated in which the sales tool could be used to show the impact of various other financial products, such as long term care products and life insurance products offered for sale.
The machine 100 may operate as a standalone device or may be connected (e.g., networked) to other machines. In embodiments where the machine is a standalone device, the set of instructions could be a computer program stored locally on the device that, when executed, causes the device to perform one or more of the methods discussed herein. Consider an example in which the machine 100 is a tablet device, such as an iPad™ or Android™ device; the computer program could be an “app” installed on the tablet device. In embodiments where the computer program is locally stored, data may be retrieved from local storage or from a remote location via a network. For example, historical data regarding various financial products could be stored locally on the machine or could be accessed remotely if a network connection is available. In a networked deployment, the machine 100 may operate in the capacity of a server or a client machine in server-client network environment, or as a peer machine in a peer-to-peer (or distributed) network environment. Although only a single machine is illustrated in
The example machine 100 illustrated in
The disk drive unit 112 includes a computer-readable medium 116 on which is stored one or more sets of computer instructions and data structures embodying or utilized by a sales tool 118 described herein. The computer instructions and data structures may also reside, completely or at least partially, within the memory 104 and/or within the processor 102 during execution thereof by the machine 100; accordingly, the memory 104 and the processor 102 also constitute computer-readable media. Embodiments are contemplated in which the sales tool 118 may be transmitted or received over a network 120 via the network interface device 114 utilizing any one of a number of transfer protocols including but not limited to the hypertext transfer protocol (“HTTP”) and file transfer protocol (“FTP”).
The network 120 may be any type of communication scheme including but not limited to fiber optic, cellular, wired, and/or wireless communication capability in any of a plurality of protocols, such as TCP/IP, Ethernet, WAP, IEEE 802.11, or any other protocol. For example, as shown in
While the computer-readable medium 116 shown in the example embodiment of
The financial product illustration data 300 provides, in one embodiment, historical performance data regarding one or more actual financial products, such as annuity products. The use of historical data for actual financial products in this embodiment allows the customer to visualize product feature differentiators of specific products, which may include proprietary features, and understand the value of these products versus a generic financial product. For example, the performance data of the financial products could be provided for each customer profile parameter that could be selected. In such an embodiment, there would be no need to calculate the potential performance of a hypothetical financial product based on actuarial formulas. Instead, the parameters selected for the customer profile could, in essence, control pointers in the appropriate tables corresponding with historical data based on an actual product.
Consider an example in which a data set for a product includes historical data for a number of years. In this example, certain of the customer profile parameters are an annuity investment amount set to $600,000, a current age of 67 and an income start age of 69. With this information, the historical data for an annuity product could be selected and visualized, which will track the actual performance of the selected annuity for a historical time period. If the historical data were for the period from 1987 to 2007, for example, the performance of an actual product starting in 1987 could be used. If the parameter for income start age was changed to 72, the pointers to the historical data would also change to correspond to the historical data in which income is delayed by three years. Since the historical data is discrete information instead of calculated data, in this embodiment, this provides information about actual products for the customer to consider.
The visualization module 302 is configured to graphically represent the impact of a selected financial product on a retirement plan, such as an amount of income or assets, over a time period based on historical data. The visualization module 302 graphically displays this information based on parameters provided by the customer profile calibration module 304, which is described in more detail below. For example, the graphical display of assets or income will change based on various parameters, such as current age, income start age, total assets, etc., selected for a scenario. As the customer or financial professional adjusts these parameters, the visualization module 302 updates the graph based on the parameters. For example, the customer could quickly determine how much income various retirement strategies might provide in an easily understandable visual format by simply changing a few input parameters. This provides immediate feedback for the customer as to various financial products being offered to show the value of these products and thereby potentially increase sales.
The customer profile calibration module 304 is configured to allow selection of a predetermined customer profile and/or create a custom customer profile by adjusting various parameters concerning the customer, such as demographic and financial information. As discussed below,
The product selection module 306 allows the user to select between various financial products, which results in the historical performance of the selected product to be graphed for the user based on the selected parameters.
The documentation module 308 is configured to allow selection of documentation, such as marketing material and assumptions, regarding the products that can chosen using the product selection module 306 and possibly other related information. For example, marketing materials regarding the products may be stored on the machine 100 or could be remotely accessible. This could include brochures, multimedia presentations, such as videos, and other materials. In some cases, the documentation module 308 could be configured to send this information to an electronic address, such as an email address. Embodiments are contemplated in which screenshots from the scenarios could also be electronically communicated to an electronic address.
In this example, the user may select between an “Assets” view in which the amount of assets are plotted against the customer's age over a certain time period and an “Income” view (
Although the present invention has been described with reference to particular means, materials and embodiments, from the foregoing description, one skilled in the art can easily ascertain the essential characteristics of the invention and various changes and modifications may be made to adapt the various uses and characteristics without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 61/692,990 filed Aug. 24, 2012, for a “Computerized Sales Tool for Visualizing the Impact of Selective Financial Products on Retirement Planning,” which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
Number | Date | Country | |
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61692990 | Aug 2012 | US |