Patent Issued for Account aggregation using email data (USPTO 11797604): Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company

2023 NOV 14 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (Springfield, Massachusetts, United States) has been issued patent number 11797604, according to news reporting originating out of Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx editors.

The patent’s inventors are Nagalla, Durga (Woburn, MA, US), White, Ryan (Springfield, MA, US).

This patent was filed on September 6, 2018 and was published online on October 24, 2023.

From the background information supplied by the inventors, news correspondents obtained the following quote: “As the processing power of computers allow for greater computer functionality and the Internet and network technology era allow for interconnectivity between computing systems, many users utilize software solutions to manage their financial needs. Currently some software solutions provide an aggregated view of the users’ finances. For example, software (e.g., an application) may provide financial management services by tracking the user’s financial behaviors across multiple accounts. To track the users’ financial behavior, the application may need to aggregate different accounts to have a holistic view of each user’s finances. However, conventional methods and software solutions for aggregating accounts have created several technical shortcomings and a new set of technical challenges.

“Specifically, in the existing and conventional methods, conventional applications require the user to manually input his/her financial account information, such as bank accounts, credit card accounts, mortgage accounts, loan accounts, investment accounts, and the like. This process is inefficient, and the setup of the application is inconvenient and creates a negative user experience. For instance, considering the account information is not always easy to remember, the user may have to obtain such information from other sources and systems. Thus, this manual input process is time consuming, complex, and error prone. Furthermore, these conventional methods may not be able to capture the user’s complete financial portfolio. The most recent financial information for a user may be missing. For example, the user may forget to input one or more financial accounts, or the user may open a new credit card account after inputting his/her financial information. The new financial accounts may not be included in the application, resulting in a less accurate financial management service provided by the application. As a result, potential clients may be discouraged from using the application due to the complexity and the heavy burden of manually updating the financial accounts in a timely way.”

Supplementing the background information on this patent, NewsRx reporters also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “For the aforementioned reasons, there is a need for a more accurate and efficient system and method that would allow a server to continuously monitor and automatically generate and update existing and new accounts in the application corresponding to each of the user’s bank accounts, credit card accounts, mortgage accounts, loan accounts, investment accounts and other financial accounts. Discussed herein are systems and methods for automatically determining the user’s financial accounts and updating the portfolio by adding new accounts or remove old accounts when the user opens or closes an account.

“In one embodiment, a method comprises receiving, by a server from an electronic client device operated by a user, a first request to identify and aggregate transaction data from one or more accounts associated with the user, the first request comprising authentication credentials for each account within the one or more accounts; querying, by the server using the received authentication credentials, a first website associated with each account within the one or more accounts to identify one or more transactions associated with each account where each transaction within the one or more transactions comprises a first account identifier corresponding to at least one account within the one or more accounts; generating, by the server, an instance within a database corresponding to the user and comprising the one or more transactions associated with each account; displaying, by the server on the electronic client device, a graphical user interface comprising one or more inputs fields configured to receive an email credential of an email account associated with the user; accessing, by the server, the email account by inputting the received email credential into a second website associated with the email account; continuously scanning, by the server, content of the email account, wherein the scanning comprises at least parsing words of each email message to identify a potentially unknown transaction; determining, by the server, a second account identifier associated with the potentially unknown transaction; determining, by the server, whether the second account identifier associated with the potentially unknown transaction corresponds to at least one account within the one or more accounts by identifying whether the instance comprises the second account identifier; when the second account identifier associated with the potentially unknown transaction does not correspond to at least one account within the one or more accounts; generating, by the server, a notification to alert the user regarding the second account identifier; and updating, by the server, the instance within the database to reflect the second account identifier by adding the second account identifier and the potentially unknown transaction into the database.

“In another embodiment, a system comprises an electronic client device, a server in communication with the electronic client device and configured to: receive, from the electronic client device operated by a user, a first request to identify and aggregate transaction data from one or more accounts associated with the user, the first request comprising authentication credentials for each account within the one or more accounts; query, using the received authentication credentials, a first website associated with each account within the one or more accounts to identify one or more transactions associated with each account where each transaction within the one or more transactions comprises a first account identifier corresponding to at least one account within the one or more accounts; generate an instance within a database corresponding to the user and comprising the one or more transactions associated with each account; display, on the electronic client device, a graphical user interface comprising one or more inputs fields configured to receive an email credential of an email account associated with the user; access the email account by inputting the received email credential into a second website associated with the email account; continuously scan content of the email account, wherein the scanning comprises at least parsing words of each email message to identify a potentially unknown transaction; determine a second account identifier associated with the potentially unknown transaction; determine whether the second account identifier associated with the potentially unknown transaction corresponds to at least one account within the one or more accounts by identifying whether the instance comprises the second account identifier; when the second account identifier associated with the potentially unknown transaction does not correspond to at least one account within the one or more accounts: generate a notification to alert the user regarding the second account identifier; and update the instance within the database to reflect the second account identifier by adding the second account identifier and the potentially unknown transaction into the database.

“It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory and are intended to provide further explanation of the disclosed embodiments and subject matter, as claimed.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method comprising: receiving, by a server from an electronic client device operated by a user, a first request to identify and aggregate transaction data from one or more known accounts associated with the user, the first request comprising authentication credentials for each account within the one or more known accounts; querying, by the server using the received authentication credentials, a first website associated with each account within the one or more known accounts to identify one or more transactions associated with the one or more known accounts, where each transaction within the one or more transactions comprises a first account identifier corresponding to at least one account within the one or more known accounts; generating, by the server, an instance within a database corresponding to the user and comprising the one or more transactions associated with each known account; generating, by the server, a graphical user interface comprising one or more inputs fields configured to receive an email credential of n email account, wherein the server identifies a login webpage associated with the email account of the user, and updates a browser plate within the graphical user interface with a portion of the login webpage to preserve a look and feel of the login webpage; displaying, by the server on the electronic client device, the graphical user interface comprising one or more inputs fields configured to receive the email credential of the email account associated with the user; upon transmitting the email credential to a email server associated with the email account, accessing, by the server from the email server, emails associated with the email account; continuously scanning, by the server, content from the emails accessed from the email server, wherein the scanning comprises at least recognizing characters and parsing words of each email message and each email message attachment to identify an image; determining, by the server, using a character recognition protocol to convert the image into machine-encoded text, that the image comprises a receipt image indicating a potentially unknown transaction, wherein determining that the image comprises the receipt image is responsive to a number words in the machine-encoded text that match known transaction words identified in a word database satisfying a threshold, wherein an unknown transaction is a transaction associated with a new account; determining, by the server, a second account identifier from the machine-encoded text generated from the receipt image, the second account identifier associated with the potentially unknown transaction and corresponding to the new account; determining, by the server, whether the second account identifier associated with the potentially unknown transaction corresponds to at least one account within the one or more known accounts by identifying whether the instance in the database comprises the second account identifier; when the second account identifier associated with the potentially unknown transaction does not correspond to at least one account within the one or more known accounts: querying the database for a combination of an amount, a date, and a merchant of the potentially unknown transaction to determine that the potentially unknown transaction is associated with a known account; when the transaction is not found in the database, generating, by the server, a notification to alert the user regarding the second account identifier, wherein the notification includes a hyperlink directing the user to the graphical user interface having at least one input element configured to receive login credentials of the new account; upon receiving the login credentials of the new account, encrypting, by the server, the loin credentials for secure future access to the new account; and updating, by the server, the instance within the database to reflect the new account by adding the second account identifier, the encrypted loin credentials, and the potentially unknown transaction into the database.

“2. The method of claim 1, wherein the first request comprises identification information of a social security number associated with the user.

“3. The method of claim 1, further comprising: determining, by the server, a bank system server corresponding to each account within the one or more accounts; and accessing, by the server, the bank system server to query the one or more transactions associated with each account.

“4. The method of claim 1, further comprising: querying, by the server from a third party credit bureau server, a credit report comprising account data associated with the user.

“5. The method of claim 1, further comprising: identifying, by the server, the potentially unknown transaction in email format, document format and image format.

“6. The method of claim 1, further comprising: tracking, by the server from merchant systems, transaction policy of the one or more transactions associated with each account and the potentially unknown transaction associated with the second account identifier; and notifying, by the server, the user regarding changes of the transaction policy.

“7. The method of claim 1, further comprising: recommending, by the server, tailored services and products to the user based upon the one or more transactions associated with each account and the potentially unknown transaction associated with the second account identifier.

“8. The method of claim 1, further comprising: aggregating, by the server, transactions under a category across multiple accounts.

“9. The method of claim 1, wherein the email credential comprises email address and login password.

“10. The method of claim 1, further comprising: determining, by the server, a transaction amount of the potentially unknown transaction from the receipt image; determining, by the server, whether the transaction amount of the potentially unknown transaction in the email message is included in the instance; when the transaction amount of the potentially unknown transaction is not included in the instance, determine the second account identifier associated with corresponding to the new account from which the potentially unknown transaction originated; generating, by the server, a notification to alert the user regarding the second account identifier; and updating, by the server, the instance within the database to reflect the new account by adding the second account identifier and the potentially unknown transaction into the database.”

There are additional claims. Please visit full patent to read further.

For the URL and additional information on this patent, see: Nagalla, Durga. Account aggregation using email data. U.S. Patent Number 11797604, filed September 6, 2018, and published online on October 24, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(11797604)&db=USPAT&type=ids

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