Patent Issued for Financial planning engine (USPTO 11348168): The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company

2022 JUN 21 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States) has been issued patent number 11348168, according to news reporting originating out of Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx editors.

The patent’s inventors are Bartholomew, Benjamin Michael (Jersey City, NJ, US), Gilmour, Thomas Richard (Edison, NJ, US), Kim, Audrey Ji-eun (New York, NY, US), Kirkpatrick, Stephany Yerger (Los Angeles, CA, US).

This patent was filed on February 17, 2016 and was published online on May 31, 2022.

From the background information supplied by the inventors, news correspondents obtained the following quote: “Field of Art

“The disclosure generally relates to the field of financial planning, and more specifically to generating financial goal packages based on user’s personal and financial information.

“Description of the Related Art

“Financial planning applications provide information for users to achieve financial goals such as saving money to purchase a house or saving money for retirement. Given a financial goal, a financial planning application determines an amount of money to be saved every set amount of time (e.g., every month or every pay check cycle) to achieve the financial goal.

“These financial planning applications oftentimes determine a savings schedule for achieving the financial goal but do not determine whether the savings schedule is feasible or suitable for the user given the user’s finances. That is, the financial planning application may not consider the user’s salary or expenses to determine the savings schedule for achieving the financial goal.

“Furthermore, users may have multiple financial goals they want to achieve. For example, a user may want to save money to buy a house, send the user’s kids to college, and to have a certain amount of money for retirement. The financial planning application may determine a savings schedule for each financial goal individually but does not consider the financial goal in combination with one another.”

Supplementing the background information on this patent, NewsRx reporters also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a financial planning application. The financial planning application receives personal and financial information from a user and generates multiple budgeting strategies based on the received personal and financial information. The budgeting strategies specify an amount of money to be saved or set aside by the user every time period to fund the user’s financial goals. For instance the budgeting strategies are based on the user’s income and expenses. The generated budgeting strategies may include a conservative budgeting strategy, a moderate budgeting strategy, and an aggressive budgeting strategy. A conservative budgeting strategy may allow the user to set aside money to fund the user’s financial goals without making cuts in the user’s expenses. Alternatively, a user may have to make cuts the user’s expenses to set money aside using the aggressive budgeting strategy. The user then selects one budgeting strategy from the generated budgeting strategies.

“To generate the budgeting strategies, a saving potential of the user is determined. The savings potential represents an amount of money that the user can set aside based on the user’s expenses. A determination is made whether the saving potential is larger than an upper threshold value. If the saving potential is larger than the upper threshold value, the budgeting strategies are generated based on a first budgeting plan. Otherwise, if the saving potential is smaller than the upper threshold value, a determination is made whether the user’s income is larger than a low-income threshold value. If the user’s income is lower than the low-income threshold value, an error message is displayed. Otherwise, if the user’s income is larger than the low-income threshold value, a determination is made whether the saving potential is larger than a lower threshold value. If the saving potential is larger than the lower threshold value, the budgeting strategies are generated based on a second budgeting plan. Otherwise, if the saving potential is smaller than the lower threshold value, the budgeting strategies are generated based on a third budgeting plan.

“The financial planning application also generates multiple goal packages, each goal package having one or more financial goals. To generate the multiple goal packages, multiple goals are generated based on the personal and financial information received from the user. The generated goals are then permuted to generate the multiple goal packages. A score is determined for each of the generated goal packages. For instance, to determine the score of a goal package, a determination is made whether each of the goals of the goal package are feasible based on the selected budgeting strategy. If a goal of a goal package is determined not to be feasible, the goal is relaxed. To relax the goal, the goal amount may be reduced or a goal date may be increased.

“A goal package is selected and displayed to the user via a graphical user interface. For instance, a goal calendar illustrating how the amounts saved for each of the goals increase over time and when a user can safely contribute to goals while maintaining other payment obligations is shown via the graphical user interface.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. An operating architecture for a financial planning system comprising: one or more client devices including at least one smart phone; a graphical user interface; and a financial planning engine at least indirectly in communications with the one or more client devices by way of a wireless communications system, the financial planning engine configured to cause at least some first information to be displayed at the graphical user interface, the financial planning engine including each of: a first hardware module including at least one first processor that includes at least some first dedicated circuitry and at least some first programmable circuitry and configured to operate as a budgeting module; a second hardware module including at least one second processor that includes at least some second dedicated circuitry and at least some second programmable circuitry and configured to operate as a cash flow module; a third hardware module including at least one third processor that includes at least some third dedicated circuitry and at least some third programmable circuitry and configured to operate as a goal package generation module; and a fourth hardware module including at least one fourth processor that includes at least some fourth dedicated circuitry and at least some fourth programmable circuitry and configured to operate as a goal package scoring module, wherein the first, second, third, and fourth hardware modules are configured to perform a plurality of operations in a substantially concurrent manner, wherein the at least one first processor, at least one second processor, at least one third processor, and at least one fourth processor are included in a cloud computing environment, wherein the goal package generation module is configured to generate one or more of a plurality of goals at least in part automatically based on received personal and financial information, wherein the goal package generation module additionally is configured to generate a plurality of goal packages by permuting feasible goals, comprising generating a respective goal package for each sub-combination of the feasible goals including a respective plurality of the feasible goals, each goal package including its respective sub-combination of the feasible goals, wherein each of the plurality of goals includes a respective goal amount and a respective goal date, and is of a respective type that is selected from the group consisting of a retirement goal type, a housing goal type, a child education goal type, an adult education goal type, an emergency savings goal type, a family growth goal type, a vacation goal type, and a credit card payment goal type, wherein the goal package scoring module is configured to score each of the generated goal packages at the goal package scoring module based on a selected budgeting strategy, wherein the at least some first information includes a goal calendar for a selected one of the plurality of goal packages, and wherein the goal package scoring module is configured to score each of the generated goal packages at the goal package scoring module at least in part by: for each of the plurality of goals, determining whether the respective goal is included in the respective goal package; and responsive to determining that the respective goal is not included in the respective goal package, decreasing a respective score of the respective goal package that does not include the respective goal, the decrease in the respective score of the respective goal package based on an importance of the not included respective goal.

“2. The operating architecture of claim 1, wherein the goal package generation module further is configured to generate the plurality of goal packages by: determining whether each of the goal packages is feasible based on the selected budgeting strategy; and responsive to determining that a first goal package of the plurality of goal packages is not feasible, relaxing a goal constraint of the first goal package.

“3. The operating architecture of claim 2, wherein the relaxing of the goal constraint comprises reducing the respective goal amount of a first goal of the first goal package.

“4. The operating architecture of claim 2, wherein the relaxing of the goal constraint comprises increasing the respective goal date of a first goal of the first goal package.

“5. The operating architecture of claim 1, wherein the cash flow module is configured to determine at least one cash flow based on the received financial information, the at least one cash flow including a positive cash flow and a negative cash flow, the positive cash flow and the negative cash flow including an additional amount, a frequency, and a likelihood; and wherein the budgeting strategy is based on the at least one cash flow.”

For the URL and additional information on this patent, see: Bartholomew, Benjamin Michael. Financial planning engine. U.S. Patent Number 11348168, filed February 17, 2016, and published online on May 31, 2022. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=11348168.PN.&OS=PN/11348168RS=PN/11348168

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