Patent Issued for Simulation-based virtual advisor (USPTO 11212241): United Services Automobile Association

2022 JAN 19 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors Chadha, Bipin (Phoenix, AZ, US), Deleon, III, Jose Esteban (Jourdanton, TX, US), Gainer, Jr., Jerome J. (Helotes, TX, US), Pace, Jr., Robert B. (San Antonio, TX, US), Tumlinson, Samuel E. (San Antonio, TX, US), Walker, Brett Andrew (Irving, TX, US), filed on June 26, 2018, was published online on December 28, 2021, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 11212241 is assigned to United Services Automobile Association (San Antonio, Texas, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Virtual assistants, such as chatbots and other automated applications, communicate with users in a variety of ways. For example, they provide answers to common or typical customer service inquiries (e.g., “How can I see my account balance?”), they provide users with static or stored information (e.g., “How much is in my account?”), and so on. However, virtual assistants, in general, are configured to provide answers to many different users having similar, or previously asked, questions to the virtual assistants, and, thus, suffer from various drawbacks associated with providing realistic, casual, and/or valuable experiences with users, such as customers or members of entities providing the virtual assistants.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “Overview

“Various embodiments of the present disclosure relate generally to providing virtual assistants. More specifically, various embodiments of the present disclosure relate to methods and systems for providing a simulation-based virtual advisor. In some embodiments, the systems and methods combine and/or integrate the functionality of a conversational virtual agent (e.g., a chatbot or virtual assistant) with the functionality of a simulation virtual agent, to provide users, customers, or members with targeted, user-specific information in response to questions or other intentions posed by the users via messages exchanged between the users and the agents.

“Thus, in some embodiments, the systems and methods described herein facilitate providing advice, such as financial advice or other user requested guidance, to users via virtual assistants. For example, a financial services entity, such as a bank, insurance company, financial management company, personal budgeting or online information tool, and so on, may utilize such systems and methods in order to provide their customers or members with predictions for how their future financial statuses (e.g., net worth, overall savings, and so on) may change in response to current or proposed actions or financial events (e.g., buying a car, refinancing a house, changing a 401 (k) withholding, increasing insurance coverage, and so on).

“The systems and methods, therefore, utilize virtual agents that facilitate providing users with near real-time (or, real-time) advice or recommendations in response to their queries or questions for whether they, the users, should perform certain financial actions. Further, the systems and methods may provide some initial guidance as to a predicted short-term or long-term impact the action (e.g., the refinanced loan) may have on the user’s financial situation or status, among other benefits.

“In some embodiments, the systems and methods provide such functionality via two combined and/or integrated agents. For example, a virtual advice platform located at a server and provided by an information services entity (e.g., financial services company) that includes the user as a member may include a conversation agent that facilitates message-based communications over a network between a mobile device associated with a user and the virtual advice platform, and a simulation agent that performs simulations associated with predicting scenarios for the user, such as various financial impact scenarios.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A computing system, comprising: one or more processors; and one or more memories, storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the computing system to perform a process comprising: facilitating message-based communications over a network between a mobile device associated with a user and a virtual advice platform that is at a server and that is provided by an information services entity that includes the user as a member, wherein the facilitating includes: receiving messages from the mobile device via one or more message communication protocols and sending messages to the mobile device; determining one or more questions, posed by the user and related to a financial purchase, within the messages received from the mobile device; and acquiring, from the user, a question detail related to the one or more questions, the question detail comprising two or more of a time or timeframe for the financial purchase, a down payment amount, a trade-in amount, or any combination thereof; performing at least one simulation associated with predicting scenarios for the user, wherein the performing one or more simulations includes: accessing information from one or more loan accounts and one or more bank accounts provided to the user by the information services entity, loan payment history information of the user and biographical information pertaining to a location associated with the user and a credit score associated with the user; and performing one or more simulations to identify a predicted impact, of a total amount of debt for the user in response to the financial purchase, using the accessed information from one or more loan accounts and one or more bank accounts, loan payment history information and biographical information and based on the one or more questions posed by the user and the question detail; and providing financial loan information and a recommendation of whether the user should make the financial purchase including: in response to the recommendation being to make the purchase, providing a first simulation result with the predicted impact on the long-term financial status of the user, and in response to the recommendation being to not make the purchase, providing a second simulation result with a negative predicted impact on the long-term financial status of the user and an alternative plan, wherein the alternative plan includes an alternative recommendation for the user to make the financial purchase at a later date, and at least one predicted impact on the long-term financial status of the user based on making the financial purchase at the later date.

“2. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the facilitating further includes identifying a question posed by the user that is associated with a change in financial planning for the user to make the financial purchase, and the performing simulations further includes performing a simulation that identifies a net worth for the user in response to the financial purchase.

“3. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the process further comprises sending a second message to the mobile device that includes information representing a result of a performed simulation in response to receiving a first message from the mobile device that includes a question posed by the user.

“4. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the one or more message communication protocols include text message protocols, instant message protocols, or online chat protocols.

“5. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the computing system provides a virtual assistant accessible to the mobile device via an application running on the mobile device that is provided by the information services entity.

“6. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the process further comprises accessing financial history information and credit score information associated with the user, and wherein the performing one or more simulations uses the accessed financial history information and credit score information.

“7. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the information services entity is a financial services entity that provides one or more financial accounts to the user.

“8. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the information services entity is an online personal services entity that aggregates information from one or more financial accounts associated with the user.

“9. The system of claim 1, wherein the predicted impact of the total amount of debt for the user is a predicted short term or long term financial status of the user based on the total amount of debt.

“10. A method, comprising: receiving, via a chatbot of an information services platform located at a server, a first message over a communications network from a mobile device associated with a user who is a member of an entity providing the information services platform; determining one or more questions, related to a financial purchase, within the first message received from the mobile device; acquiring a question detail related to the one or more questions, the question detail comprising two or more of a time or timeframe for the financial purchase, a down payment amount, a trade-in amount, or any combination thereof; accessing information from one or more loan accounts and one or more bank accounts provided to the user by an information services entity providing the information services platform, loan payment history information of the user and biographical information pertaining to a location associated with the user; performing one or more simulations to identify a predicted impact, of a total amount of debt for the user in response to the financial purchase, using the accessed information from one or more loan accounts and one or more bank accounts, loan payment history information and biographical information and based on A) the one or more questions and B) the question detail; and providing, via the chatbot, a second message to the mobile device that includes a-financial loan payment information and a recommendation of whether the user should make the financial purchase including: in response to the recommendation being to make the purchase, providing a first simulation result with the predicted impact on the long-term financial status of the user, and in response to the recommendation being to not make the purchase, providing a second simulation result with a negative predicted impact on the long-term financial status of the user and an alternative plan, wherein the alternative plan includes an alternative recommendation for the user to make the financial purchase at a later date, and at least one predicted impact on the long-term financial status of the user based on making the financial purchase at the later date.

“11. The method of claim 10, wherein providing the second message to the mobile device that includes the result of the performed one or more simulations includes providing an answer to at least one, of the one or more questions, based on the result of the performed one or more simulations.

“12. The method of claim 10, wherein determining the one or more questions within the first message received from the mobile device includes performing natural language processing of the first message to identify the financial purchase; and wherein providing the second message to the mobile device that includes the result of the performed one or more simulations includes sending the second message that includes information representative of the predicted impact of the total amount of debt of the user.

“13. The method of claim 10, wherein receiving the first message over the communications network from the mobile device associated with the user includes receiving a text message, an instant message, or a chat message from the mobile device.

“14. The method of claim 10, wherein the one or more simulations are further based on financial history information associated with the user.

“15. The method of claim 10, wherein determining the one or more questions within the first message received from the mobile device includes identifying, via a natural language processing operation, one or more keywords within the first message that are associated with a financial question posed by the user to the information services platform.”

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

URL and more information on this patent, see: Chadha, Bipin. Simulation-based virtual advisor. U.S. Patent Number 11212241, filed June 26, 2018, and published online on December 28, 2021. 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=11212241.PN.&OS=PN/11212241RS=PN/11212241

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