Patent Issued for System for automated description and categorization (USPTO 11710187): Hartford Fire Insurance Company

2023 AUG 11 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Hartford Fire Insurance Company (Hartford, Connecticut, United States) has been issued patent number 11710187, according to news reporting originating out of Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx editors.

The patent’s inventors are Rakshe, Anand Nagesh (Avon, CT, US), Sin, Vannak (Avon, CT, US), Varney, Jr., James Joseph (Tolland, CT, US).

This patent was filed on August 20, 2020 and was published online on July 25, 2023.

From the background information supplied by the inventors, news correspondents obtained the following quote: “In some cases, a user might be potentially interested in entering into a risk relationship with an enterprise. For example, a business might be potentially interested in purchasing insurance from an insurer (e.g., to help spread risks associated with property damage, worker injuries, etc.). When exploring such a potential relationship, the business typically provides various types of information to the insurer (e.g., what type of business it is, how long the business has existed, how many employees work for the business, etc.) and receives an insurance quote, including an estimated insurance premium value, from the insurer. The business can then decide whether or not it will purchase an insurance policy from the insurer.

“Often, a business will interact with an insurance agent to provide details about the business to the insurer. The insurance agent will typically have a substantial amount of experience with respect to collecting information about a business. For example, an insurance agent may be able to quickly assign a correct industry code to the business. It can be difficult, however, for a business to directly provide this type of information to an insurer. That is, because the business does not usually interact with insurance companies, determining an appropriate industry code for the business can be a confusing, time consuming, and error prone process. As a result, the ability to have a business interact directly with an insurer may be substantially limited.

“It would therefore be desirable to provide systems and methods to automatically facilitate an exchange of risk relationship information directly between a user and an enterprise in an automated, efficient, and accurate manner.”

Supplementing the background information on this patent, NewsRx reporters also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “According to some embodiments, systems, methods, apparatus, computer program code and means to facilitate an exchange of risk relationship information directly between a user and an enterprise in an automated, efficient, and accurate manner. In some embodiments, a back-end application computer server may receive a potential risk relationship request along with a descriptive term. A look-up process may be performed based on the descriptive term (and hidden terms) may establish a set of potential pre-determined descriptions. The user may select one of the potential descriptions, and a user identifier may be associated with the request. A series of dynamic information exchanges may then help assign a category to the user identifier. A partial set of initial request details may be received from a third-party device and the user may adjust and/or add details to create a complete set. A potential value may then be calculated for the potential risk relationship. An indication of the potential value may be transmitted to the user, and information about the user identifier may be transmitted to a user response terminal to facilitate communication between the user response terminal and the user.

“Some embodiments comprise: means for receiving at a back-end application computer server, directly from a remote front-end user device associated with the user via a communication interface, a potential risk relationship request, wherein the communication interface facilitates an exchange of electronic messages, including messages exchanged via a distributed communication network; means for receiving at least one descriptive term from the front-end user device via an interactive user interface display; means for performing a look-up process based on the at least one descriptive term to establish a set of potential pre-determined descriptions, wherein the look-up process associates hidden descriptive terms with at least some of the potential pre-determined descriptions based on electronic records in a description data store, the description data store including a plurality of electronic records each associating a descriptive term with at least one hidden term and a potential pre-determined description; means for transmitting an indication of the set of potential pre-determined descriptions from the back-end application computer server to the front-end user device via the communication network; means receiving, from the front-end user device via the interactive user interface display, a selected description from the set of potential pre-determined descriptions; means for associating a user identifier with the potential risk relationship request; means for automatically assigning, via a series of dynamic information exchanges retrieved based on the selected description and electronic data records in a categorization data store, one of a number of pre-determined categories as being associated with the user identifier, wherein the categorization data store includes a plurality of electronic records each associating a description with a dynamic information exchange and at least one pre-determined category; means for receiving, from a third-party device based on the selected description, the user identifier, or the assigned category, a partial set of initial request details; means for receiving, from the front-end user device, adjustments to the partial set of initial request details along with additional initial request details to establish a complete set of request details; means for automatically calculating, based on the selected description, the assigned category, the complete set of request details, and information from an enterprise platform associated with the enterprise, a potential value associated with the potential risk relationship; means for transmitting an indication of the automatically calculated potential value directly from the back-end application computer server to the front-end user device via the communication network; and means for automatically transmitting information about the user identifier to a user response terminal, associated with the enterprise, to facilitate communication between the user response terminal and the user.

“In some embodiments, a communication interface associated with a back-end application computer server exchanges information with remote front-end user devices. The information may be exchanged, for example, via public and/or proprietary communication networks.

“Technical effects of some embodiments of the invention are improved and computerized ways to facilitate an exchange of risk relationship information directly between a user and an enterprise in an automated, efficient, and accurate manner. With these and other advantages and features that will become hereinafter apparent, a more complete understanding of the nature of the invention can be obtained by referring to the following detailed description and to the drawings appended hereto.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method of facilitating a data exchange between a user and an automated back-end application computer server via an interactive user interface display, the method comprising: receiving directly from a web browser of a front-end user device, a signal indicating a request, wherein the web browser facilitates an exchange of electronic messages, including messages exchanged via a distributed communication network, dynamically modifying a font or a page layout of the interactive user interface display based on the front-end user device, wherein information displayed on the interactive user interface display is presented based on a type of device, receiving, via a descriptive term input element of a first of a plurality of web pages for which data is contained in a computer store, at least one descriptive term from the front-end user device, performing a look-up process based on the at least one descriptive term to establish a set of potential pre-determined descriptions, wherein the look-up process associates hidden descriptive terms with at least some of the potential pre-determined descriptions based on electronic records in a description data store, transmitting an indication of the set of potential pre-determined descriptions from a computer server to the front-end user device, receiving, from the front-end user device, a selected description from the set of potential pre-determined descriptions, associating a user identifier with the request, automatically assigning, via a dynamic information exchange element included in a second of the plurality of web pages, one of a number of pre-determined categories as being associated with the user identifier, receiving, from a third-party device based on the selected description, the user identifier, or the assigned category, a partial set of initial request details, said third-party device associated with one of a customer relationship manager platform, a department of motor vehicles platform, a real estate platform and a credit score platform, pre-populating information fields in the interactive user interface display by using the partial set of initial request details received from the third-party device, receiving, from the front-end user device, adjustments to the partial set of initial request details along with additional initial request details to establish a complete set of request details, validating data received from the user by using information received from the third-party device, automatically calculating a potential value associated with the request wherein the calculation is based on all of: the selected description, the assigned category, the complete set of request details, and information from an enterprise platform, automatically transmitting information about the user identifier directly to a user response terminal, associated with an enterprise, to facilitate communication between the user response terminal and the user, wherein the information about the user identifier transmitted to the user response terminal includes at least one of: (i) an email address, (ii) an Internet protocol address, (iii) a telephone number, (iv) a user name, (v) the selected description, (vi) the assigned category, (vii) at least some of the complete set of request details, and (viii) the automatically calculated potential value, and automatically generating and transmitting directly to the web browser a results web page that displays: (A) the automatically calculated potential value, and (B) a user-selectable icon to establish communication between the front-end user device and the user response terminal.

“2. The method of claim 1, wherein the front-end user device is associated with at least one of: (i) a personal computer, (ii) a tablet computer, (iii) a smartphone, (iv) a television device, (v) a gaming device, and (vi) a smartwatch.

“3. The method of claim 1, wherein the user identifier is associated with at least one of: (i) a user name, (ii) an email address, (iii) an Internet protocol address, (iv) a telephone number, and (v) a postal address.

“4. The method of claim 1, wherein information from the third-party device is further used to validate data received from the user.

“5. The method of claim 1, wherein the selected description represents an industry code.

“6. The method of claim 1, wherein the assigned category represents building information.

“7. The method of claim 1, wherein the complete set of request details includes at least three of: (i) a number of business locations, (ii) a number of employees, (iii) a business ZIP code, (iv) an indication of one or more types of insurance, (v) a time period, (vi) a business location, (vii) contact information, (viii) a legal entity type, (ix) an indication of when a business was established, (x) an office type, (xi) an estimated annual sales or gross revenue value, (xii) an online sales estimate, (xiii) a number of property losses, (xiv) a business personal property limit, (xv) a personal property of others limit, (xvi) a number of liability losses, (xvii) a general liability limit, (xviii) building information, (xix) workers’ compensation insurance data, and (xx) optional coverage selections.

“8. The method of claim 1, wherein the automatically calculated potential value represents a potential insurance premium value.

“9. A non-transitory memory device for storing program instructions to control a processor to facilitate a data exchange between a user and an automated back-end computer server via an interactive user interface display by performing functions as follows: receiving directly from a web browser of a front-end user device a signal indicating a request, wherein the web browser facilitates an exchange of electronic messages, including messages exchanged via a distributed communication network, dynamically modifying a font or a page layout of the interactive user interface display based on the front-end user device, wherein information displayed on the interactive user interface display is presented based on a type of device, receiving, via a descriptive term input element of a first of a plurality of web pages for which data is contained in a computer store, at least one descriptive term from the front-end user device, performing a look-up process based on the at least one descriptive term to establish a set of potential pre-determined descriptions, wherein the look-up process associates hidden descriptive terms with at least some of the potential pre-determined descriptions based on electronic records in a description data store, transmitting an indication of the set of potential pre-determined descriptions from a computer server to the front-end user device, receiving, from the front-end user device, a selected description from the set of potential pre-determined descriptions, associating a user identifier with the request, automatically assigning, via a dynamic information exchange element included in a second of the plurality of web pages, one of a number of pre-determined categories as being associated with the user identifier, receiving, from a third-party device based on the selected description, the user identifier, or the assigned category, a partial set of initial request details, said third-party device associated with one of a customer relationship manager platform, a department of motor vehicles platform, a real estate platform and a credit score platform, pre-populating information fields in the interactive user interface display by using the partial set of initial request details received from the third-party device, receiving, from the front-end user device, adjustments to the partial set of initial request details along with additional initial request details to establish a complete set of request details, validating data received from the user by using information received from the third-party device, automatically calculating a potential value associated with the request wherein the calculation is based on all of: the selected description, the assigned category, the complete set of request details, and information from an enterprise platform, automatically transmitting information about the user identifier directly to a user response terminal, associated with an enterprise, to facilitate communication between the user response terminal and the user, wherein the information about the user identifier transmitted to the user response terminal includes at least one of: (i) an email address, (ii) an Internet protocol address, (iii) a telephone number, (iv) a user name, (v) the selected description, (vi) the assigned category, (vii) at least some of the complete set of request details, (viii) a postal address and (ix) the automatically calculated potential value, and automatically generating and transmitting directly to the web browser a results web page that displays: A) the automatically calculated potential value, and (B) a user-selectable icon to establish communication between the front-end user device and the user response terminal.

“10. The memory device of claim 9, wherein the front-end user device is associated with at least one of: (i) a personal computer, (ii) a tablet computer, (iii) a smartphone, (iv) a television device, (v) a gaming device, and (vi) a smartwatch.

“11. The memory device of claim 9, wherein information from the third-party device is further used to validate data received from the user.”

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

For the URL and additional information on this patent, see: Rakshe, Anand Nagesh. System for automated description and categorization. U.S. Patent Number 11710187, filed August 20, 2020, and published online on July 25, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(11710187)&db=USPAT&type=ids

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