Patent Application Titled “Compliance Hub” Published Online (USPTO 20210312581): Aspen Ventures Limited

2021 OCT 25 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- According to news reporting originating from Washington, D.C., by NewsRx journalists, a patent application by the inventors O’CONNOR, Michael Joseph (Tralee, IE); RYAN, Sean (Ardfert, IE); SORENSON, Scott (Cork, IE), filed on April 5, 2021, was made available online on October 7, 2021.

The assignee for this patent application is Aspen Ventures Limited (Tralee, Ireland).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “In the insurance industry, when a claim is made, the insurer may assign outsourced service providers to travel to a site of an insured for the purpose of servicing the claim, i.e., assessing damage and making repairs. In many cases the assignment of contractors by an insurer on behalf of an insured may be handled by third party administrators as opposed to internally by the insurer. In addition, a contractor hired to service a claim may subcontract some or all of the work to be performed to a fourth party, and that party may even subcontract a portion of the work to be done to a fifth party, and so on. The insurer may rely on its third-party administrator to make sure all contractors have conducted appropriate background checks on their own personnel and require the same of any subcontractors, for example. It is important in the insurance and other industries to ensure that contractors hired to perform work on the site of an insured or other party are properly qualified with criminal background checks and the like prior to dispatch. This situation is not unique to the insurance industry, but the insurance industry may perhaps have some of the most exacting standards with respect to background checks.

“Yet background checks can range widely in depth and breadth depending on cost, ranging from an inexpensive background check that simply confirms the identity of the person being assessed to a background check that may cost hundreds of dollars and reports on results from every court in every jurisdiction in which the person being checked has resided in the past. This causes a high level of uncertainty as to the quality of the background check, and in turn the criminal history of individual being assessed, for an insurer or other business looking to outsource work to that individual. While a prospective contractor can state that all its employees have undergone background checks, the scope of the background checks conducted may not measure up to the appropriate standards. Because of the foregoing, businesses will often physically audit and review the background check reports run by their contractors, for example, to ensure that they are reliable indicators of compliance with various industry standards. This is a time-consuming process that involves the training of auditors and delays in the commencement of projects.

“Also missing from the art is a clear standard with a consistent scoring mechanism and a unique number that can be trusted to quickly and efficiently demonstrate that a background check is of high quality and run by a certified consumer reporting agency (CRA), all without having to train someone on how to read a background check report while remaining compliant with all local and state laws regarding the use of background check reports. It is an object of the present invention to provide such a reliable standard, which is absent from the current state of the art. Individuals and businesses can then be notified as to who will be visiting their property to carry out work and be assured that the individual has been qualified against a clear, robust standard, providing peace of mind. It is a further object of the invention to provide a virtual compliance hub that not only allows for the qualification of outsourced personnel against the standard, but also allows each person performing work on a site to make his or her individual compliance rating visible to those seeking services of the type performed by that individual, and to sign in and out at the property visited, thereby providing proof of service by a professional who has been qualified against the standard, and to allow authorized users to log in and view the compliance levels of various individuals according to one aspect of the invention.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent application, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent application: “The invention of the present disclosure comprises embodiments of a systems and methods for the qualification of personnel based on a standard derived from certified CRA inputs obtained from any number of jurisdictions that can be expressed numerically for ease of understanding and associated with the identity of a person evaluated using the system, all while maintaining the privacy of the personally identifying information (PII) of the person evaluated. It is an object of the invention to enable organizations to have governance, compliance and risk management controls as it relates to their employee and contractor networks while simplifying compliance and reducing third-party risk and cost. There is a long felt need among individuals and businesses to have peace of mind regarding the qualifications of persons working on their property and knowledge that the person has undergone a thorough, quality-controlled criminal background check. The meeting of that need is one object of the invention.

“It is another object of the present invention to provide a clear industry standard that can be used to by users of the systems and methods as described herein to determine whether prospective contractors meet their specific compliance requirements based on the incorporation of various industry standards related to background checks. It is an object of the invention to provide a standard, generated through a compliance matrix enabled by a system as described herein, that measures individual compliance (IC) scores of screened individuals against industry-specific requirements to determine industry-specific IC levels based on criminal history data, court records and other factors of interest in a way that may be customized depending on the information of interest to various industries and how the industries weigh that information in engaging personnel.

“In accordance with a method of the present invention, a CRA that is certified to carry out the method may collect PII such as name, address, social security number, etc. of an individual and associate a unique Assigned Background Compliance (ABC) number with that individual. From there, the CRA can generate an IC score based on background check information and submit an ABC number and corresponding IC level into a system of the present invention via a locally or remotely installed application program interface (API) provided with appropriate authentication and security measures. Since ABC numbers do not directly incorporate any PII, it is another object of the invention to provide users with valuable information on IC levels while maintaining the privacy of individuals associated with ABC numbers.

“The invention of the present disclosure allows for network oversight in the form of real-time visibility of every employee, vendor, contractor, subcontractor, or field professional working for a user of the systems and methods as described herein. The systems and methods described herein also incorporate tracking functionalities such that a full audit history of every customer employees or third-party contractors of a user visit is made available. These and other advantages of the present invention will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method for selecting a third-party service provider, the method comprising: entering personally identifiable information (PII) corresponding to the third-party service provider to a database via an application program interface (API) in network communication with the database, the database being in network communication with a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising software program instructions, wherein the software program instructions when executed by a computer processor cause the computer processor to transmit data requirements to the third-party service provider; generating a unique identifier representing the PII but not containing any of the PII; uploading the required data to the database via an API in network communication therewith; transmitting the PII and required data to a background check agent (BGC) and obtaining from the BGC the results of a background check; calculating an individual compliance (IC) score by comparing the background check results against a comparison matrix; and in response to a user query, presenting the IC score and corresponding unique identifier visually to the user; wherein the IC score and unique identifier correspond to the third-party service provider.

“2. The method of claim 1, wherein the unique identifier is a number and the PII is validated using consent-based social security verification.

“3. The method of claim 2, the results of the background check are selected from the group consisting of consumer reporting agency (CRA) records, criminal records, or combinations thereof.

“4. The method of claim 3, wherein the comparison matrix is based on standards applicable to a specific industry.

“5. The method of claim 4, wherein the industry is selected from the group consisting of the insurance industry and the mortgage industry.

“6. The method of claim 5, wherein the IC score is selected from the group consisting of IC01, IC02, IC03 and IC04, wherein the risk associated with the third-party service provider increases from IC01-IC04.

“7. The method of claim 6, the method further comprising a means of challenging the IC score and changing the score based on additional data.

“8. The method of claim 6, further comprising the step of publishing the IC score to a group of individuals selected by the third-party service provider.

“9. The method of claim 7, further comprising the step of publishing the IC score to a group of individuals selected by the third-party service provider.

“10. A system for selecting a third-party service provider, the system comprising: a database comprising PII of at least one third-party service provider in network communication with an API enabling entry of the PII into the database and a first software module tangibly stored on a non-transitory computer readable medium, wherein the first software module comprises instructions which when executed by a computer processor cause the computer processor to generate a number representing the PII but not containing any of the PII and transmit data requirements to the third-party service provider, wherein the third party service provider transmits the required data to the database, where it is associated with the PII.

“11. The system of claim 10, further comprising a second software module tangibly stored on a non-transitory computer readable medium and a comparison matrix, wherein the second software module comprises instructions which when executed by a connected computer processor cause the computer processor to generate an IC score by multiplying the PII and required data by the comparison matrix.

“12. The system of claim 11, wherein the IC score is selected from the group consisting of IC01, IC02, IC03 and IC04.

“13. The system of claim 12, wherein the risk associated with the third-party service provider increases from IC01-IC04.

“14. The system of claim 13, the method further comprising a means of challenging the IC score and changing the score based on additional data.

“15. The method of claim 14, further comprising the means of publishing the IC score to a group of individuals selected by the third-party service provider.”

For more information, see this patent application: O’CONNOR, Michael Joseph; RYAN, Sean; SORENSON, Scott. Compliance Hub. Filed April 5, 2021 and posted October 7, 2021. Patent URL: https://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220210312581%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20210312581&RS=DN/20210312581

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