Patent Application
20150278936
Achieving a financial goal can be a difficult and daunting task. With so many investment options available, determining an appropriate strategy for investing in order to achieve a goal can be overwhelming. Often, individuals might have a common goal but may be investing separately, thereby not taking advantage of the total of all of their assets being invested. Further, although those individuals might have a common goal, he or she may also desire to maintain control of his or her individual investments, accounts, and the like.
The following presents a simplified summary in order to provide a basic understanding of some aspects of the disclosure. The summary is not an extensive overview of the disclosure. It is neither intended to identify key or critical elements of the disclosure nor to delineate the scope of the disclosure. The following summary merely presents some concepts of the disclosure in a simplified form as a prelude to the description below.
Aspects of the disclosure relate to methods, computer-readable media, systems, and apparatuses for receiving information associated with at least one account of a first user and at least one account of a second user. A determination may be made as to whether the first user and the second user have consented to group the at least one account associated with each user. Upon determining that the users have consented, the accounts may be grouped and a common financial goal for the grouped accounts may be determined. The grouped accounts may then be managed toward the common financial goal.
The present disclosure is illustrated by way of example and not limited in the accompanying figures in which like reference numerals indicate similar elements and in which:
In the following description of various illustrative embodiments, reference is made to the accompanying drawings, which form a part hereof, and in which is shown, by way of illustration, various embodiments in which the claimed subject matter may be practiced. It is to be understood that other embodiments may be utilized, and that structural and functional modifications may be made, without departing from the scope of the present claimed subject matter.
It is noted that various connections between elements are discussed in the following description. It is noted that these connections are general and, unless specified otherwise, may be direct or indirect, wired or wireless, and that the specification is not intended to be limiting in this respect.
Aspects of the arrangements described herein relate to creating relationships among one or more accounts of one or more different users. For instance, two or more users may have a common goal or objective when investing. For instance, a husband and wife may be saving for college tuition for one or more children. In another example, three individuals may desire to purchase a vacation home together and are saving toward that end. In another example, two spouses may be saving for retirement with a variety of different retirement assets. Although the users may maintain control of each individual account, the accounts of the multiple parties may be grouped together and managed toward the determined common financial goal. These and various other aspects will be discussed more fully below.
Computing system environment 100 may include computing device 101 having processor 103 for controlling overall operation of computing device 101 and its associated components, including random-access memory (RAM) 105, read-only memory (ROM) 107, communications module 109, and memory 115. Computing device 101 may include a variety of computer readable media. Computer readable media may be any available media that may be accessed by computing device 101, may be non-transitory, and may include volatile and nonvolatile, removable and non-removable media implemented in any method or technology for storage of information such as computer-readable instructions, object code, data structures, program modules, or other data. Examples of computer readable media may include random access memory (RAM), read only memory (ROM), electronically erasable programmable read only memory (EEPROM), flash memory or other memory technology, compact disk read-only memory (CD-ROM), digital versatile disks (DVD) or other optical disk storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium that can be used to store the desired information and that can be accessed by computing device 101.
Although not required, various aspects described herein may be embodied as a method, a data processing system, or as a computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions. For example, a computer-readable medium storing instructions to cause a processor to perform steps of a method in accordance with aspects of the disclosed arrangements is contemplated. For example, aspects of the method steps disclosed herein may be executed on a processor on computing device 101. Such a processor may execute computer-executable instructions stored on a computer-readable medium.
Software may be stored within memory 115 and/or storage to provide instructions to processor 103 for enabling computing device 101 to perform various functions. For example, memory 115 may store software used by computing device 101, such as operating system 117, application programs 119, and associated database 121. Also, some or all of the computer executable instructions for computing device 101 may be embodied in hardware or firmware. Although not shown, RAM 105 may include one or more applications representing the application data stored in RAM 105 while computing device 101 is on and corresponding software applications (e.g., software tasks), are running on computing device 101.
Communications module 109 may include a microphone, keypad, touch screen, and/or stylus through which a user of computing device 101 may provide input, and may also include one or more of a speaker for providing audio output and a video display device for providing textual, audiovisual and/or graphical output. Computing system environment 100 may also include optical scanners (not shown). Exemplary usages include scanning and converting paper documents, e.g., correspondence, receipts, and the like, to digital files.
Computing device 101 may operate in a networked environment supporting connections to one or more remote computing devices, such as computing devices 141 and 151. Computing devices 141 and 151 may be personal computing devices or servers that include any or all of the elements described above relative to computing device 101. Computing devices 141 or 151 may be a mobile device (e.g., smart phone) communicating over a wireless carrier channel.
The network connections depicted in
The disclosure is operational with numerous other general purpose or special purpose computing system environments or configurations. Examples of well-known computing systems, environments, and/or configurations that may be suitable for use with the disclosed embodiments include, but are not limited to, personal computers (PCs), server computers, hand-held or laptop devices, smart phones, multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based systems, set top boxes, programmable consumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframe computers, distributed computing environments that include any of the above systems or devices, and the like.
Computer network 203 may be any suitable computer network including the Internet, an intranet, a wide-area network (WAN), a local-area network (LAN), a wireless network, a digital subscriber line (DSL) network, a frame relay network, an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network, a virtual private network (VPN), or any combination of any of the same. Communications links 202 and 205 may be any communications links suitable for communicating between workstations 201 and server 204 (e.g. network control center), such as network links, dial-up links, wireless links, hard-wired links, as well as network types developed in the future, and the like. A virtual machine may be a software implementation of a computer that executes computer programs as if it were a standalone physical machine.
The common goal planning system 300 may include one or more modules that may include hardware and/or software configured to perform various functions within the system 300. For instance, each module may include one or more aspects of computing device 101 in
The common goal planning system 300 may include an account module 304. The account module 304 may contain or store (such as in one or more databases) information associated with one or more accounts. For instance, the account module may include account numbers, customer information (e.g., name, address, contact information, and the like) for each customer associated with an account, type of account (e.g., individual retirement account, money market account, savings account, checking account, and the like), goals or goal attributes (e.g., strategy for investing, such as aggressive, conservative, mixed, or the like) associated with the account, and the like. Additional types of account information may be stored within the account module 304 without departing from the invention.
The account module 304 may store accounts individually and may also store, upon request by one or more users, accounts that have been joined or grouped together for the purpose of working toward a common goal. For instance, two or more users (e.g., husband and wife, parent and child, and the like) may each have separate accounts but may have a common goal to work toward (e.g., saving for retirement, new home, college, or the like). Accordingly, one or more individual accounts associated with each user may be grouped together with one or more individual accounts of one or more other users to manage all accounts toward a determined common goal. In some arrangements, the individual accounts grouped together may be various individual accounts of a single user (e.g., a user may have multiple accounts of different types and may have a common goal to work toward. Those accounts may be grouped and managed with an eye toward the common goal.).
In some examples, the account module 304 may be connected to or in communication with a consent module 306. The consent module 306 may include and/or store information associated with consent provided by users associated with various accounts, such as the accounts associated with information stored in account module 304. If, for example, two or more users would like to join or group their accounts to achieve a common goal (e.g., save for retirement, save for sending children to college, and the like) the consent to do so may be stored in consent module 306. For instance, the system may receive input (e.g., from one or more of computing devices 310a-310e) to join multiple accounts for a purpose of working toward a common goal. Upon receiving the input, the system may determine whether consent for the joining was provided by the users by requesting confirmation of the consent from the consent module 306.
In some arrangements, the consent module may store additional consents provided by users. For instance, once two or more accounts of two or more users are joined or grouped for the purpose of working toward the common goal, in some examples, any change to the common goal may require consent of all parties having accounts grouped. That consent may be provided via the consent module 306 (e.g., the consent selections may be made by the users and stored in consent module 306). Additionally or alternatively, one or more of the users having an account that has been joined to or grouped with at least one other account may consent to permit another user having an account that has been joined or grouped to make any modifications to the common goal. Accordingly, if a change is made to the common goal for those accounts that are joined, the system may determine whether the change or modification may be made by determining whether the other users having accounts have either consented to the change or consented to permit the user making the change to modify the common goal without his or her consent.
The common goal planning system 300 may further include a common goal module 308.
The common goal module may include hardware and/or software configured to identify a common goal for user accounts that have been joined. In some examples, the common goal module 308 may determine a common goal for one or more accounts that have been joined. That is, a financial advisor or client may provide general information to the system (e.g., via one or more of computing devices 310a-310e) and the common goal module 308 may, based at least in part on that information, determine a common goal for the joined accounts. In some examples, the common goal module 308 may also manage or make adjustments to one or more accounts within the combined account to work toward the common goal. The goals determined may be general or broad (e.g., save for retirement, save for new home, and the like), may be related to risk (e.g., aggressive investment, conservative investment, or the like), or may include a particular target (e.g., save $X for retirement by date Y, save $A for college needs by date B, and the like).
Further, in some arrangements, the common goal, or one or more attributes of the common goal, may be selected or input by a user. The user may be a holder of one or more accounts within the group. In some examples, the user may be a financial advisor providing counsel to the users having accounts within the group.
These and various other arrangements will be discussed more fully below.
In step 404, a determination is made as to whether both the first user and the second user have provided consent to group the accounts of each user to be managed toward a common goal. In some examples, the determination may be made by querying a database storing consent data (such as a database within consent module 306 in
Grouping or joining the accounts may include providing combined data (e.g., balances, year-to-date earnings, and the like) for a single joined or grouped account. However, each user may still maintain each individual account. That is, the individual accounts of each user are not being combined together into a new account. Rather, the individual accounts are being grouped to be viewed as a single account and may be managed collectively toward the common goal. However, each user may still maintain each individual account and may make modifications to the individual accounts. If, in some instances, a modification made to an individual account would conflict with the common goal, a notification may be transmitted to the user making the modification to indicate the conflict. The notification may, in some examples, be transmitted prior to processing the modification, and may further include various other options that might not conflict with the common goal.
In step 408, the accounts that have been grouped may be managed toward the common goal. Accordingly, investment decisions, and the like, may be made for the accounts collectively to work toward the determined common goal. As indicated above, each user may still maintain the individual accounts associated with the respective user and may make modifications to the individual accounts. However, the grouped accounts will be generally managed together to achieve the common goal.
If, in step 404, it is determined that consent to group the accounts to be managed toward a common goal has not been received, then the individual accounts of the users might not be grouped and, instead, may continue to be managed toward each individual goal. For instance, in step 410, any accounts of the first user may be managed (e.g., investment decisions made and/or implemented) based on the individual goal of the first user. In step 412, any accounts of the second user may be managed toward the individual goal of the second user.
In step 504, a determination is made as to whether all parties in the group have consented to the requested modification. This may be determined, in some examples, by querying a consent database, such as in module 306 in
Alternatively, if all parties have not consented to the modification in step 504, a determination may be made in step 508, as to whether the identified non-consenting party has agreed to waive consent. This determination may be made, for example, by querying a database of consent, such as in module 306 in
Fields 710, 714, and 718 identify the allocation of assets and field 712, 716 and 720 identify respective percentages for each allocation. Once the desired selections are made, a user may select “OK” option 722 to process the selections made. Alternatively, a user may select “CLEAR” option 724 to remove any selections made.
As discussed herein, grouping one or more accounts of one or more users in order to manage the accounts to achieve a common goal between users provides an efficient way to manage assets and work toward a common goal. Each individual account of each individual user may remain with the individual user (e.g., may be managed, modified, or the like, by the user) but may be considered collectively with the other grouped accounts in determining a strategy to meet the determined common financial goal. Accordingly, the individual still maintains control of the individual account and funds within it, but the accounts and/or funds may be grouped to more broadly work toward the common financial goal.
As discussed herein, the process of efficiently identifying service level agreements running during a particular time period may aid in planning outages, downtime, and the like. In addition, efficiently determining the service level agreements running when an outage occurred may aid in restoring the system quickly and efficiently. Further, identifying the service level agreements running when the outage occurred, as well as the status or progress of each service level agreement, may aid in estimating a time to full recovery or operation of the system. Further, the arrangements described herein may aid in automating some or all aspects of a system recovery by providing a system to identify service level agreements running when an outage occurred, a priority of the service level agreements, and a progress of the service level agreements. The system may then automatically initiate and/or complete a recovery or restoration of the system based on this information.
Various aspects described herein may be embodied as a method, an apparatus, or as one or more computer-readable media storing computer-executable instructions. Accordingly, those aspects may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment, or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects. Any and/or all of the method steps described herein may be embodied in computer-executable instructions stored on a computer-readable medium, such as a non-transitory computer readable medium. Additionally or alternatively, any and/or all of the method steps described herein may be embodied in computer-readable instructions stored in the memory of an apparatus that includes one or more processors, such that the apparatus is caused to perform such method steps when the one or more processors execute the computer-readable instructions. In addition, various signals representing data or events as described herein may be transferred between a source and a destination in the form of light and/or electromagnetic waves traveling through signal-conducting media such as metal wires, optical fibers, and/or wireless transmission media (e.g., air and/or space).
Aspects of the disclosure have been described in terms of illustrative embodiments thereof. Numerous other embodiments, modifications, and variations within the scope and spirit of the appended claims will occur to persons of ordinary skill in the art from a review of this disclosure. For example, one of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the steps illustrated in the illustrative figures may be performed in other than the recited order, and that one or more steps illustrated may be optional in accordance with aspects of the disclosure. Further, one or more aspects described with respect to one figure or arrangement may be used in conjunction with other aspects associated with another figure or portion of the description.
