Abstract:
The present invention relates to a method identifying relationships between professionals and other industry entities by assigning codes in categories and combining the codes to indicate a unique entity with discernable relationships. The method can be used to store information that describes different entities separately, while tracking relationships by applying alpha-numeric codes that identify a relationship when combined. The method creates and assigns codes to identify specific categories. The assigned codes from each category are combined in order to identify a specific entity by the relationship an individual has with other entities in other categories. Ultimately, a code can be identified for every unique relationship an individual professional has with other entities, including working relationships with other individuals.

Description:
STATEMENT OF PRIORITY 
       [0001]    The foregoing application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/201,561 filed on Aug. 5, 2015 and is entitled “Method of Identifying Relationships between Financial Professionals and Other Financial Services Entities.” 
     
    
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0002]    Field of the Invention 
         [0003]    The present invention relates generally to systems and methods of identifying relationships between service professionals and service entities. 
         [0004]    Background 
         [0005]    Currently, there are a number of solutions for tracking service professionals (financial services professionals, attorneys, real estate professionals, insurance professionals) including methods used by government agencies, commercial sources, and firms that employ the aforementioned service professionals. 
         [0006]    With respect to financial services professionals, Federal systems match registered advisors with broker/dealers as it is necessary to conduct legal financial transactions. In Federal systems, office locations and other contact information for individual advisors, is not accurately tracked, and is often erroneous. Accurate advisor tracking is further exacerbated when considering non-registered firms and non-registered support personnel largely go untracked. Further this, Team information is not tracked. Referring to  FIGS. 4 and 6 , the method includes defining team attributes to identify working relationships within an established team of two or more individuals who work together under either a financial arrangement or a functional arrangement. In the current marketplace, the same individual may have relationships with multiple teams across multiple locations and on behalf of multiple firms. 
         [0007]    While State and Federal Government systems compile office locations information for various types of registered advisors on a regular basis, they rely on manual inputs from the firms being tracked. Third party commercial services gather information from Government, agency, and other sources. Records are often tracked at the branch level alone to avoid the complexities of maintaining records on the individual level. Again, even these systems have flaws as non-registered personnel and team information are not usually tracked. Tracking individuals and relationships is key within the Financial Services industry has a disproportionally high-volume of individual movement. Financial services companies, such as mutual fund companies, employ large numbers of personnel in order to reconcile and update their records in an attempt to track movement. Once collected, each company employs their own method of organizing and tracking advisors. Non-licensed personnel, who are often decision makers, are not tracked at all. Financial professional movement averages 5-8% monthly, which creates a large amount of work for companies trying to maintain an accurate repository of information. Additionally, with the increasing amount of team relationships, partnership transactions, and dual registrations, firms are often unsure whether records are obsolete, duplicative, or erroneous. 
         [0008]    Team information for these firms is acquired more slowly than with individual advisors. Indeed, it is difficult to track team information due to the lack of a standard methodology to identify groups and partnerships and their associated individual contributors. Further, a growing number of independent professionals are collecting revenue on the basis of fees rather than commissioned transactions, and are not tracked at all by conventional sources. Even for diligent financial services firms who continuously update relationship information, the structural deficiency of including all relevant attributes for an individual and his or her relationships in a single record, makes it nearly impossible to accurately track relationships and behaviors due to the continuous changes in individual attributes and relationships. 
         [0009]    Because of the high volume of movement in the financial services industry, tracking financial professionals and their activities has always been a substantial effort for financial services companies. Additionally, changes in financial professional working relationships in the last decade have made the tracking effort even more cumbersome. The Patriot Act and know-your-customer (KYC) regulations motivate professionals to work in teams rather than alone in order to better understand their customers&#39; financial relationships and manage risk, thereby increasing the formations of groups and partnerships in the industry. Additionally, the Registered Independent Adviser (RIA) business model is a popular alternative to standard hierarchical organizational structures within larger broker/dealers as it offers more autonomous work and focuses on building relationships with private investors. RIA personnel are not typically tracked by conventional sources. 
         [0010]    Financial professionals increasingly work with multiple teammates, in multiple locations, and multiple firms/dealers. As a result, record keeping has become exceedingly complex. The added complexity of multiple working relationships has resulted in financial firms having large amounts of erroneous, unclassified, duplicate, and out-of-date information. This erroneous data is difficult to parse and assign to individual professionals. The difficulty required to accurately track an individual according to their relationships, locations, sales, and specialty, continues to expand exponentially and represents an exorbitant cost proposition. Therefore, there is an immediate need for a method of identification that is easily executed and that clearly identifies entities by their working relationships in the industry and results in reduced cost. 
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
       [0011]    The present invention advantageously addresses the aforementioned deficiencies by providing systems and methods for identifying relationships between service professionals and services entities, providing a concise framework for tracking individual professionals across multiple working relationships. The present invention maintains information that describes different entities separately, while tracking relationships by applying codes that can identify a service professional&#39;s working relationship as a unique entity. In order to carry out this method, the method creates and assigns codes to an infinite number of identifying categories and combines each assigned code in order to identify a unique entity. 
         [0000]    The present method may also include one of the following steps:
       Assign attributes to one or more entities in a category, cataloging them according to their unique category code; and   Divide category codes further to indicate more specific relationships. By way of example, for the Team category, one alphanumeric code may describe a Group (G), which is a functional designation that includes two or more people working in similar or complementary roles for a common purpose. Another Team alphanumeric code may describe a Partnership (P) relationship, which indicates a revenue sharing agreement between professionals on one or more transactions. These relationships are readily apparent by the contents of the Team code.       
 
         [0014]    It is a further an object of the present invention to reduce the labor and expense required when updating records related to service professionals. Further still, it is an object of the present invention to provide a concise method and framework for documenting non-registered financial entities including independent firms, teams, representatives, and support personnel. Further still, it is an object of the present invention to provide a concise method and framework with which to capture and store professional information with relation to their specific industry relationships. 
         [0015]    The present invention now will be described more fully below with reference to the accompanying drawings, which are intended to be read in conjunction with this summary, the detailed description and any preferred and/or particular embodiments specifically discussed or otherwise disclosed. This invention may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein. Rather, these embodiments are provided by way of illustration only and so that this disclosure will be thorough, complete and will fully convey the full scope of the invention to those skilled in the art. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0016]      FIG. 1  is an architectural diagram illustrating a framework used for identifying individual relationships with other entities using this method; 
           [0017]      FIG. 2  is a table illustrating the first of four exemplary category indices, the Firm Category, with representative codes in the first column identifying specific firms in the index and their associated attributes; 
           [0018]      FIG. 3  is a table illustrating the second of four exemplary category indices, the Location Category, with representative codes in the first column identifying specific locations in the index and their associated attributes; 
           [0019]      FIG. 4  is a table illustrating the third of four exemplary category indices, the Team Category, with representative codes in the first column identifying specific Groups (G) or Partnerships (P) contained in the index and their associated attributes; 
           [0020]      FIG. 5  is a table illustrating the fourth of four exemplary category indices, the Individual Category with representative codes in the first column identifying specific individuals in the index and their associated attributes; 
           [0021]      FIG. 6  is a table illustrating the combination of the four categories and the resulting codes. Each row in the figure identifies a unique entity using the same individual by listing the applicable codes for firms, locations, and teams with whom the individual has a specific working relationship; and 
           [0022]      FIG. 7  is an architectural diagram illustrating the same framework used for identifying individual relationships as shown in  FIG. 1 , but with category names customized for the financial services industry. The exemplary categories in  FIG. 7  are named Dealer (D), Branch (B), Team (T), and Representative (R) to reflect language commonly used in the financial services industry. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 
       [0023]      FIGS. 1-7 , described in detail below, illustrate an exemplary embodiment of the present invention. The present invention is directed to a method of identifying relationships between service professionals and other services entities. Although some descriptions below reference financial services professionals, the method may be applied to any and all professional services entities.  FIG. 1  is an architectural diagram illustrating an exemplary framework used for identifying individual relationships with other entities using this method. Element  100  illustrates a framework for identifying service professional relationships having manipulatable categories. As shown in  FIG. 1 , framework  100  has exemplary categories Firm  102 , Location  104 , Team  106 , and Individual  108 . The architecture illustrates an example of an unique entity code by combining representative codes for a specific firm, a specific location, a specific team, and a specific individual. The specificity of the entity by combining four categories is important because it does not include relationships or transactions outside of the categories defined, and as such, cannot be confused with other entities with different attributes. More categories may be added to further increase entity specificity if it would benefit the method in identifying a more precise entity. Similarity, categories can be removed to decrease entity specificity. 
         [0024]    Firm category  102  is a representation of a specific firm or business entity using an assigned code. Location category  104  is a representation of specific physical address using an assigned code. Team category  106  is a representation of a team of two or more individuals with either a revenue sharing relationship or a functional work relationship using an assigned code. Individual category  108  is a representation of a specific individual using an assigned code. 
         [0025]    As an illustrative example of performing the claimed method, codes are created for Firm Category  102 . Next, the created codes are assigned to Firm Category  102 . The codes can be any one of an alphanumeric, binary, hexagonal, decimal code or octagonal code or any other code capable of distinguishing one attribute from another. Firm Category  102  may include any company involved in financial services and is not limited solely to Broker/Dealers licensed to trade securities. Firm category codes are stored in an index for Firm Category  102 . Moreover, descriptive attributes are assigned as needed, as they relate to particular firms in the Firm Category index. Following the creation and assigning of codes to Firm Category  102 , at least one code is created and assigned for Location Category  104 . Location Category  104  contains a worldwide listing of physical and virtual addresses. Descriptive attributes are assigned as needed, as they relate to particular locations in the Location Category Index. Next, at least one code created and assigned for Team Category  106 . A team in Team Category  106  is comprised of two or more individuals who have a working relationship. 
         [0026]    Teams in Team Category  106  are divided into two subcategories, namely, groups and partnerships. A group is a team of two or more individuals who have a functional relationship and most often perform different or complimentary tasks. A partnership generally indicates the presence of a revenue sharing agreement between one or more professionals for one or more transactions. Groups and partnerships maintain a separate coding rationale so each respective subcategory can be readily identified, while permitting the existence of both codes within the Team Category Index. Descriptive attributes are assigned as needed in the Team Category Index. Finally, at least one code is created and assigned for Individuals Category  108 . Individuals listed in Individuals Category  108  have a unique code that identifies each individual. A myriad of attributes may be assigned in the Individual Category Index that are unique to that individual. For Financial Services, individuals may be professionals, support staff, management, or any other industry persons that may have a working relationship with a financial professional. In fact, the same is true for other service industries/entities. 
         [0027]      FIG. 2  illustrates a table of Firm Category  200 . Firm Category  200  has a Firm Code  202 . A Firm Code  202  identifies a specific firm or business entity. Firm Category  200  also includes at least one Firm Attribute  204 . A Firm Attribute  204  may include, but is not limited to, a principal office address, information for an administrative contact, a historical or operations fact, or any differentiator that would be useful to specifically define a firm as a unique entity. While Firm Category  200  is shown with two defined Firm Attributes  204  and  206 , the number of Firm Attributes is infinitely expandable and is illustrated by Firm Attribute  208 . Codes  210  of Firm Code  202  and Firm Attributes  204 ,  206  and  208  can be alphanumeric, binary, hexagonal, decimal code or octagonal code or any other code capable of distinguishing on attribute from another. The Firm Category index can include non-broker/dealers. 
         [0028]      FIG. 3  illustrates a table of Location Category  300 . Location Category  300  has a Location Code  302 . Location Code  302  identifies a specific geographical location. Location Category  300  also includes at least one Location Attribute  304 . Location Attribute  304  can be a physical address, information for an administrative contact, or any descriptive or geographical discriminator that further defines a specific location as a unique entity While Location Category  300  is shown with two defined Location Attributes  304  and  306 , the number of Location Attributes is infinitely expandable and is illustrated by Location Attribute  308 . Codes  310  of Location Code  302  and Location Attributes  304 ,  306  and  308  can be alphanumeric, binary, hexagonal, decimal code or octagonal code or any other code capable of distinguishing on attribute from another. 
         [0029]      FIG. 4  illustrates a table of Team Category  400 . Location Category  400  has a Team Code  402 . Team Code  402  identifies a unique team of two or more individuals with either a revenue sharing arrangement or a functional working relationship. Team Category  400  also includes at least one Team Attribute  404 . Team Attribute  404  may include the name of a group, information for an administrative contact, a physical or virtual address, a service specialty, an operations discriminator, a revenue split percentage, or any differentiator that would be useful to specifically define a team as a unique entity. While Team Category  400  is shown with two defined Team Attributes  404  and  406 , the number of Team Attributes is infinitely expandable and is illustrated by Team Attribute  408 . Codes  410  of Team Code  402  and Team Attributes  404 ,  406  and  408  can be alphanumeric, binary, hexagonal, decimal code or octagonal code or any other code capable of distinguishing on attribute from another. Team Category index can be coded to identify groups and partnerships. 
         [0030]      FIG. 5  illustrates a table of Individual Category  500 . Individual Category  500  has an Individual Code  502 . Location code  502  identifies a unique individual. Individual Category  500  also includes at least one Individual Attribute  504 . Individual Attribute  504  can be a physical or virtual address, other contact information, a qualification, title, or role, or any historical, behavioral, or factual attributes that serve to further define an individual as a unique entity. While Individual Category  500  is shown with two defined Individual Attributes  504  and  506 , the number of Individual Attributes is infinitely expandable and is illustrated by Individual Attribute  508 . Codes  510  of Individual Code  502  and Individual Attributes  504 ,  506  and  508  can be alphanumeric, binary, hexagonal, decimal code or octagonal code or any other code capable of distinguishing on attribute from another. 
         [0031]      FIG. 6  is a table illustrating Unique Entity  600 . Unique Entity  600  in this example is comprised of the four categories and the resulting codes, namely, Firm Code  202 , Location Code  302 , Team Code  402 , and Individual Code  502  discussed supra. By combining the assigned codes, each row depicted represents a unique entity. Further, the Individual Code  502  in this example represents the same individual across all rows, illustrating the common complexity of current industry working relationships. Though the Unique Entity  600  is described herein as being comprised of four codes, it should be known that Unique Entity  600  could be comprised with more or fewer codes from more or fewer categories than discussed in the previous embodiment. Moreover, the additional codes can be alphanumeric, binary, hexagonal, decimal code or octagonal code or any other code capable of distinguishing on attribute from another. 
         [0032]      FIG. 7  is an architectural diagram illustrating the same framework used for identifying individual relationships as shown in  FIG. 1 , but with a Framework  700  having category names customized for the financial services industry. The four categories in  FIG. 7  are named Dealer (D)  702 , Branch (B)  704 , Team (T)  706 , and Representative (R)  708  to reflect language germane to the financial services industry. 
         [0033]    By creating codes for each category (i.e., Firm, Location, Team, and Individual), attributes using this method may be assigned and maintained as separate entities within each category. Individual professional movement does not affect an attribute or record assigned to another category. Further, category codes may be joined as needed to identify specific relationships for any combination across categories to succinctly define a unique entity and identify a specific working relationship. The method will therefore simplify record maintenance, help eliminate confusion due to duplicate records, and enable more accurate record keeping related to the actions an individual professional performs on behalf of a specific well-defined working relationship. 
         [0034]    The present invention method is unique when compared with other known processes and solutions in that it simplifies record maintenance by allowing category changes that can apply to multiple relationships. For instance, during a merger, an office may maintain all of its previous attributes and personnel. The only change for the office may be the firm affiliation, which can be modified using our method by combining the established Location code with a different Firm code to indicate a new relationship—every individual associated with that office can therefore be updated immediately with the new firm relationship without the need to modify or replace other records. 
         [0035]    Separately, the present invention allows for detailed attributes to be assigned to teaming relationships for both Groups and Partnerships so that information can be gathered and assessed for these particular teaming entities. The inclusion of any non-licensed support staff, and non-registered independent professionals in the Individual Category  500  can also be identified as belonging to a team by including their Individual code as part of the Unique Entity code  600 . Still further, the present invention enables the definition of new entities for individuals by combining codes across categories. Attributes can be assigned to individuals based on particular working relationships, allowing for more complete and accurate record keeping. 
         [0036]    While the method was invented for the purpose of advanced record keeping, appending and matching information to the coded framework proves valuable. Numerical values could be appended for sales transactions, fees, assets, and other types of data that would yield information specific to individuals as they relate to other financial services entities. The resulting information could be used for assessing payments and analysis for the purpose of profiling, segmenting, investigating, or performance reporting. The method was created for identifying relationships in the financial services industry, but there are other industries with similar business relationships where the use of the same framework and coding methodology for selected categories may be advantageous, especially in a circumstance where an individual has multiple working relationships with other entities, including but not limited to attorneys, real estate professionals, and insurance professionals. 
         [0037]    While the present invention has been described above in terms of specific embodiments, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to these disclosed embodiments. Many modifications and other embodiments of the invention will come to mind of those skilled in the art to which this invention pertains, and which are intended to be and are covered by both this disclosure and the appended claims. It is indeed intended that the scope of the invention should be determined by proper interpretation and construction of the appended claims and their legal equivalents, as understood by those of skill in the art relying upon the disclosure in this specification and the attached drawings.