Patent Issued for Systems and methods for managing financial transaction information (USPTO 11756127): United Services Automobile Association

2023 OCT 04 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- According to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx journalists, a patent by the inventors Desai, Snehal (Richardson, TX, US), Dortch, Celena (San Antonio, TX, US), Hartshorn, Joel S (Olalla, WA, US), Liang, Minya (Redmond, WA, US), Lopez, Jeanie Graciela (San Antonio, TX, US), Prasad, Bharat (San Antonio, TX, US), Schwarz, Jr., Thomas Wayne (Helotes, TX, US), Serrao, Nolan (Plano, TX, US), Whittington, Paula Ann (Helotes, TX, US), filed on July 23, 2020, was published online on September 12, 2023.

The assignee for this patent, patent number 11756127, is United Services Automobile Association (San Antonio, Texas, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “The present disclosure relates generally to managing financial transaction information and, more particular, to systems and methods for managing financial transaction information for an item of personal property using distributed ledger techniques.

“Ownership and authenticity of personal property items, such as luxury purses and jewelry, can often be difficult to validate. In addition, insurance coverage for such personal property items may be unknowingly duplicated through personal property provisions in home insurance policies and individual policies for the personal property items. Accordingly, improved systems and methods for validating ownership of personal property items and managing insurance policies are desirable.

“This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present disclosure, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it may be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “One or more specific embodiments will be described below. In an effort to provide a concise description of these embodiments, not all features of an actual implementation are described in the specification. It should be appreciated that in the development of any such actual implementation, as in any engineering or design project, numerous implementation-specific decisions must be made to achieve the developers’ specific goals, such as compliance with system-related and business-related constraints, which may vary from one implementation to another. Moreover, it should be appreciated that such a development effort might be complex and time consuming, but would nevertheless be a routine undertaking of design, fabrication, and manufacture for those of ordinary skill having the benefit of this disclosure.

“When introducing elements of various embodiments of the present disclosure, the articles “a,” “an,” and “the” are intended to mean that there are one or more of the elements. The terms “comprising,” “including,” and “having” are intended to be inclusive and mean that there may be additional elements other than the listed elements. Additionally, it should be understood that references to “one embodiment” or “an embodiment” of the present disclosure are not intended to be interpreted as excluding the existence of additional embodiments that also incorporate the recited features.

“Embodiments of the present disclosure include distributed ledger systems, such as blockchain systems, application programming interfaces (APIs), and/or methods for operation thereof that may implement a distributed ledger infrastructure for managing financial transaction information, for example, the provision of such financial transaction information to other users, authorization of future financial transactions, and adjustment of insurance information for personal property items.

“As mentioned above, ownership and authenticity of personal property items can often be difficult to validate. Validation of ownership and authenticity of personal property items can be beneficial to organizations by preventing against fraud and by assisting in producing accurate valuations for personal property items. To enable organizations to validate authenticity and ownership of personal property items, the presently disclosed embodiments detail certain systems and methods for accessing information about an item of personal property stored on a distributed ledger. For example, an owner of a personal property item, such as jewelry, an article of clothing, electronic devices, luxury goods, or any other suitable personal property item, may wish to protect against potential loss of the personal property item by requesting an insurance policy from an organization.

“In one embodiment, a computing system may receive a request to insure an item of personal property. The computing system may determine ownership and authenticity of the item of personal property by accessing information stored on the distributed ledger. For example, information stored on the distributed ledger may include a purchase date for the personal property item, a receipt, a serial number, a product number, location of the personal property item, and any other information providing authentication and/or ownership information. The computing system may compare information stored on the distributed ledger with information received from the owner of the personal property item in the request for the insurance policy. For example, the computing system may compare a serial number recorded by the manufacturer of the personal property item on the distributed ledger with a serial number provided by the owner of the personal property item. By comparing and matching the respective serial numbers, the computing system may determine the personal property item is a valid item produced by the manufacturer.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A system, comprising: at least one processor; and at least one non-transitory computer-readable media communicatively coupled to the at least one processor, the at least one non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions which, when executed, cause the processor to perform operations comprising: receiving a request to insure an item of personal property from a computing device associated with a user; accessing a distributed ledger stored on at least one computing device, wherein the distributed ledger is associated with the item of personal property, and wherein the distributed ledger comprises: merchant information indicative of identification information associated with a merchant; personal information indicative of identification information associated with at least one previous owner of the item of personal property, a current owner of the item of personal property, or both; and property information indicative of an appraisal value associated with the item of personal property; determining that the item is currently owned by the user based on the personal information of the distributed ledger; determining that the item is authentic based on the merchant information of the distributed ledger; determining a value of the item based on the property information of the distributed ledger; generating an insurance policy for the item based at least in part on the value in response to determining that the item is currently owned by the user and that the item is authentic; and sending a notification indicative of the insurance policy to the computing device, wherein the notification is configured to cause the computing device to display a visualization indicative of one or more properties of the insurance policy.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein the instructions which, when executed, cause the processor to further perform the operations comprising: receiving an indication of an activity related to the item of personal property; and determining an updated value of the item of personal property.

“3. The system of claim 2, wherein the instructions which, when executed, cause the processor to update the insurance policy for the item based at least on the updated value.

“4. The system of claim 2, wherein the activity comprises an appraisal of the item, a financial transaction for the item, a loss of the item, or any combination thereof.

“5. The system of claim 3, wherein the instructions which, when executed, cause the processor to further perform the operations comprising sending a notification corresponding to the activity to a computing system.

“6. The system of claim 1, wherein the instructions which, when executed, cause the processor to further perform the operations comprising sending a notification of the insurance policy to a computing system.

“7. The system of claim 1, wherein the instructions which, when executed, cause the processor to further perform the operations comprising storing the insurance policy for the item in the distributed ledger.

“8. A method, comprising: receiving, from a distributed ledger via a processor, an indication of an activity related to a personal property item having a first value, the personal property item associated with an insurance policy stored on the distributed ledger, the distributed ledger comprising: merchant information indicative of identification information associated with a merchant; personal information indicative of identification information associated with at least one previous owner of the item of personal property, a current owner of the item of personal property, or both; and property information indicative of an appraisal value associated with the item of personal property, the insurance policy, or both; determining, via the processor, an updated value of the personal property item based on the activity; updating, via the processor, at least one of one or more terms of the insurance policy based on the updated value; and sending a notification indicative of the updated at least one of the one or more terms of the insurance policy to a computing device, wherein the notification is configured to cause the computing device to display a visualization indicative of one or more properties of the insurance policy.

“9. The method of claim 8, wherein the activity comprises one or more of an appraisal of the personal property item, a financial transaction for the personal property item, and a loss of the personal property item.

“10. The method of claim 9, further comprising determining, via the processor, ownership of the personal property item based on transaction history information stored on the distributed ledger, wherein the transaction history information includes a series of financial transactions associated with the personal property item.

“11. The method of claim 10, wherein the series of financial transactions comprises: a first transaction information associated with the personal property item, the first transaction information including a manufacturer of the personal property item and an initial purchaser of the personal property item.

“12. The method of claim 11, wherein the series of financial transactions comprises: a second transaction information associated with the personal property item, the second transaction information including the initial purchaser of the personal property item and a subsequent purchaser of the personal property item.

“13. The method of claim 9, wherein updating at least one of the one or more terms includes updating a coverage amount in the insurance policy based on the updated value.

“14. The method of claim 13, wherein the coverage amount is equal to the updated value.

“15. The method of claim 9, wherein updating at least one of the terms includes updating a premium amount in the insurance policy based on the updated value.

“16. The method of claim 9, wherein updating at least one of the one or more terms includes cancelling the insurance policy.”

For more information, see this patent: Desai, Snehal. Systems and methods for managing financial transaction information. U.S. Patent Number 11756127, filed July 23, 2020, and published online on September 12, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(11756127)&db=USPAT&type=ids

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