Registers – Systems controlled by data bearing records – Banking systems
Reexamination Certificate
2000-10-16
2002-03-12
Frech, Karl D. (Department: 2876)
Registers
Systems controlled by data bearing records
Banking systems
C235S380000, C705S042000, C705S035000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06354490
ABSTRACT:
NOTICE OF COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL IN DISCLOSURE
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to financial transaction systems, and in particular, to an integrated full service consumer banking system and a system and method for opening a single account that allows customers to access a full range of global financial services using a variety of access points.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
In recent years, financial institutions have become increasingly diversified. Banks, for example, now offer a wide variety of products and services not previously available. These new products and services fall into two broad categories—new technologies for interacting with the financial institution and new financial services or “PRODUCTS” offered by the financial institution.
Innovative technologies for interacting with banks include the now ubiquitous automatic teller machines and customer activated terminals (ATMs and CATs) and, more recently, screen phones, personal computers configured for banking, personal digital assistants, voice response systems, and smart cards. Technology in existence today allows bank customers to access their banks from any place at any time. Notwithstanding these technical advances few bank customers take advantage of the full range of access points.
Financial institutions have also begun to offer a broader range of traditional banking accounts as well as investment and financial services. The traditional marketing approach of banks has been to try to enroll customers in new accounts, typically checking or savings accounts. Then, when the bank offers additional financial products or services, the bank tries to cross sell new accounts to customers having existing accounts with the bank.
One barrier caused by traditional account opening and cross selling of new accounts is that the customer must repeatedly provide the bank with the same data. This is very inconvenient and inconvenience is a significant obstacle in marketing of financial services.
Financial service is very much an inertia business. Once a customer opens an account, he or she is unlikely to change that account because of the effort involved. Most people don't shop for financial services. Instead, something in a customer's life occurs to cause a customer to make a change or be open to a change. There are moments in life when inertia is overcome; either by moving, death, formation of a family, a customer gets so angry at something that the customer decides to make a change, or some other event occurs. Thus, at the moment a customer opens an account they are open to new components, but it is difficult to open a customer up again. For this reason, cross selling financial services is very difficult. Once a person has a set of accounts, then something's got to happen in their life to cause them to open up another account.
To overcome these obstacles, the focus of the present invention is to build a relationship with the customer rather than opening stand alone accounts for the customer. Studies have shown that as a customer's relationship with a bank broadens, the customer's balances increase. The present inventors have found that one way to establish a long term relationship with a customer involves opening a single account in which the customer has access to a full range of services at once.
There have, of course, been attempts to provide linked account structures in the past. The Citicard account, introduced in 1976 and 1977, was the first account that allowed four or five accounts to be mechanically linked together. A simple transactional account, short term savings, day-to-day savings, and 90-day savings, checking and checking plus line of credit were all linked in the Citicard account. Over the next ten years, other banks copied this approach and began offering “linked accounts,” which are essentially transactional banking accounts with some saving components and perhaps a line of credit—a very traditional banking product.
Another significant development was the asset management accounts offered by certain brokerage firms. These accounts offered a plurality of securities components in a single account. The brokerage firms were not, however able to offer traditional banking services. One example is Merrill Lynch's cash management account (CMA). Aspects of this account are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,346,442 to Musmanno; U.S. Pat. No. 4,376,978 to Musmanno; U.S. Pat. No. 4,597,046 to Musmanno et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,044 to Musmanno et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,774,663 to Musmanno et al. and U.S . Pat. No. 5,270,922 to Higgins. The account offered by Merrill Lynch was limited to securities transactions and did not include full banking products.
Similarly, when a customer opens a brokerage account, there is no need to open a separate account for trading equities or for trading fixed income.
The next development in the evolution of Citibank's account was the so-called asset network account that included a full range of brokerage services and, in addition, full banking services. This form of account originally known as FOCUS has become known as the CitiGold Account. This account, like brokerage accounts, was intended for sophisticated investors. The central feature of the account was sweeping funds into a money market account on a daily basis. Such an account is not, however, suitable for a broad market account that includes unsophisticated investors. The CitiGold Account also did not include credit cards as a component of the account. The CitiGold was an elite account intended for sophisticated investors.
The CitiGold Account system introduced the idea of integration and consistent presentations across the entire range of customer access points, including ATM machines, automated voice response systems, phone operators, staff screens, home banking on a computer, home banking on a screen phone, etc. In other words, in every contact with the financial institution, the customer sees the same presentation of the account and the same capability to do the transactions.
Another step in the evolution of the Citibank account was the Citione account, introduced in the early 1990's. This account permitted linking of transaction accounts, certain traditional banking accounts and bank saving accounts so the customer could access all these accounts. In some regions the CitiOne account included securities or loan services such as line of credit services.
With the Citione account, customer's accounts could be linked together randomly so that the financial institution's different products and services could be linked together and appear on a customer's statement. This was done on an ad hoc basis depending on a customer's desires. The basic features available in the United States were checking, day-to-day savings, and insured money market accounts, certificates of deposit (CDs) and credit cards.
The next step in the evolution was the Citibank Money Management Account (CMMA), introduced around January 1993. The CMMA allows customers to link separate accounts and to perform a wide variety of financial transactions including traditional banking activities, brokerage activities and loan activities. Again, individual customer accounts could be linked to form an ad hoc mixture of product features. The system categorized those features within categories such as “your money in the bank,” “securities,” “borrowing and loan,” “credit cards” and the like. Among other things, the CMMA allows banking customers the convenience of “one-stop” shopping. Efforts were also made to provide consistent presentation. For example, on the screen phone and in personal computing banking, the top menu was made to look li
Dowd Marylou
Weiss Lawrence
Citibank N.A.
Frech Karl D.
Kilpatrick & Stockton LLP
Marcou George T.
Nowlin April A.
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