Patent Publication Number: US-6341272-B1

Title: Business service platform, network, and system

Description:
This is a continuation of application Ser. No. 09/104,576, filed Jun. 25, 1998, now allowed as U.S. Pat. No. 5,899,982, which was a continuation of application Ser. No. 08/401,075, filed Mar. 8, 1995 that issued as U.S. Pat. No. 5,787,403 and application Ser. No. 08/523,692, filed Sep. 5, 1995 that issued as U.S. Pat. No. 5,774,663. 
    
    
     FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
     This invention relates to a bank-centric network identifying a bank as a central service provider to a customer and is designed to provide user access, presentation and gateway functions that permit a customer to communicate with product providers through a financial institution. The network is customer-accessed through an access gateway and associated with a conventional bank or financial institution and provides conventional financial information, products and services offered by a bank and is a further gateway to other “non-bank” information, products and services via a banking service platform. More particularly, a banking service platform is provided that includes a client server interconnected with the centralized information processor of a conventional financial institution or bank and through an access gateway to a customer operable transceiver to provide access to bank and non-bank products, while maintaining a bank as a focus of the customer&#39;s affinity. 
     BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     An increasing number of people are demanding more convenience to access various types of consumer services, including banking, bill paying, shopping, travel and other products and services. Catering to the demand for added convenience in banking services are ATMs, direct deposit and banking by telephone and mail. Financial institutions are now seeing competition from a host of new non-financial institution competitors, ranging from investment firms with expanding menus of services to software manufacturers, which have sought to position themselves as primary providers of financial services via electronic access. Financial institutions may continue to hold the money, but these new non-financial institution competitors seek to control the customers. 
     The banking industry, reacting to this transformation of the competitive environment, has hurried to established electronic connectivity with customers—in some cases choosing systems quickly without sufficient consideration of the strategic value or long-term vitality of the particular technology involved. Even though some of these systems seem to offer “control” of customer relationships, they leave much activity in the hands of a third party provider that is not a financial institution, and these systems actually weaken the relationship link between the financial institution and its customers. 
     There is a need for a system that enables financial institutions to retain control of customer relationships and customer loyalty and identification with a bank yet enables the customer to use the most advanced technology available. The present invention provides such a system as a bank-centric service platform. The banking service platform is a unique, fault-tolerant, scalable distributed computing environment that puts advanced technology directly into the control of the financial institution, with the same plug-and-play efficiency of third party non-financial institution options. With the present invention, the financial institution, and not a third party non-financial institution provider, is the central focus of the customer&#39;s relationship and the bank becomes the perceived and actual provider of financial information, products and services to the customer; and the customer&#39;s bank becomes the branded gateway to a plurality of banking and non-banking information, products and services, that, but for the gateway, would not otherwise be offered by the bank. 
     In present third party provider systems, the customer calls the third party to do his/her banking; and because the third party owns and manages a facility to enable the customer to obtain electronic services via the third party, the third party becomes in effect the customer&#39;s “bank.” The relational affinity of the customer&#39;s actual bank with which the customer has an account fades in the customer&#39;s view as the third party service provider becomes identified as the first relationship the customer uses to initiate transactions. 
     The banking service platform of the present invention allows the financial institution to own and manage the system and to control and manage the flow of information between the financial institution and the customer. The relationship between the financial institution and the customer is direct and personal. The present invention also allows the financial institution to become a gateway identified with the bank name to non-banking information, products and services. 
     A banking service platform is provided that enables access by a customer at a remote location to financial information, products and services maintained by a bank at a central location. The banking service platform includes a central information processor at the central location of a bank, which, ordinarily, is the bank&#39;s master computer. The central information processor includes data storage files relating to categories of bank financial information, products and services and an access gateway to other providers (non-bank) of financial and non-financial information, products and services. Customer operable transceivers at remote locations send and receive communications to and from the central information processor through a client server that is operatively interconnected to communicate with the transceivers and the central information processor. The client server handles processing and transmitting communications to and from the customer operable transceivers. The client server enables a customer using the transceiver to access and control items within the categories of financial information, products and services maintained in the data storage files of the central information processor and the financial and non-financial information, products and services of other providers accessible through the gateway. 
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
     FIG. 1 is an overall system flow chart of the service platform of the present invention. 
     FIGS. 2A and 2B are views of customer operable transceiver screen displays. 
     FIG. 3 is an overall system flow chart of the service platform of the present invention incorporating video connections between business representatives and customers. 
     FIG. 4 is a view of a customer operable transceiver screen display. 
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION AND THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT 
     FIG. 1 is an overall flow chart showing, in general fashion, the interrelationship of certain functional and operative components of the banking service platform, generally designated  10 . The banking service platform  10  includes a client server  30  in front of the financial institution&#39;s mainframe computer or central information processor  20 . The banking service platform  10  is networked with other platforms, even those installed in different operating environments to provide a gateway  40  to traditionally non-bank products and services. The banking service platform  10  connects to the financial institution&#39;s existing databases through a software wrapper around the financial institution&#39;s existing system(s), that may be a main frame, distributed network, or other central system. The need for costly, time-consuming re-coding is eliminated. Thus, the financial institution&#39;s banking service platform  10  can include all of the products and services that the financial institution develops or that the financial institution selects from available options of information, products and services. These options may include bill payment, brokerage, investment, catalog shopping, travel and others. The financial institution or bank retains control over the options it makes available to customers through the banking service platform  10 . 
     A financial institution&#39;s present, in place, central information processor  20  typically includes data storage files relating to categories of financial information, products and services that are bank originated. These files may include bank data files (e.g., customer and account information)  24 , data about bank financial products  26 , and other internal files of the financial institution related to its bank function. The central information processor  20  may also be interconnected with an internal bank network  22  that is linked to various other locations L 1 , L 2 , L 3 , . . . , LN, e.g., bank branch offices, bank officer&#39;s desktops, or the bank&#39;s own ATMs  33 , or the bank&#39;s network affiliation of ATMs etc.,  34 , to provide information about customers, accounts, and bank products and/or services. The central information processor may include means for debiting and crediting accounts upon receipt of instructions or signals, and for recording information thereof in the data files. The central information processor  20  also includes an access gateway  40  to other, typically non-bank, providers P 1 , P 2 , P 3 , . . . , PN of financial and non-financial products and services, not otherwise directly provided by the bank. One or more of these providers such as P 1  may also be interconnected with other providers s 1 , s 2 , . . . , sN to allow access to financial and non-financial information, products and services of these sub-providers. 
     The bank-centric service platform  10  enables access by a customer at a remote location to conventional financial information, products and services offered by the bank and maintained by the bank&#39;s central information processor in addition to other providers of financial and non-financial information, products and services such as travel, shopping and the like not otherwise directly offered by the bank in the absence of the gateway connection. This access is accomplished via the access gateway  40  of the central information processor  20 . 
     The customer obtains access to financial and non-financial information, products and services via customer operable transceivers (R 1 , R 2 , R 3 , . . . , RN) at remote locations. The transceiver used in this application includes any electronic device that can transmit and/or receive communications, including, inter alia, standard telephone, smart telephone, computer, PC, interactive television, video banking machine, ATM, point of sale terminals, video phone, TDD device, kiosks maintained by the bank at the bank and remote locations, and other data input/output devices. A client server  30  is operatively interconnected through communication controller  50  and the access gateway  40  to communicate with the transceivers R 1 , . . . , RN and the central information processor  20 . The client server  30  handles processing and transmitting communications to and from the customer operable transceivers R 1 , . . . , RN and enables a customer using the transceivers R 1 , . . . , RN to access and control items within the categories of financial information, products and services maintained in the data storage files of the central information processor  20  of the bank and the financial and non-financial products and services of other providers P 1 , P 2 , . . . , PN that are accessible through the gateway  40  interconnected with bank central processor  20 . As noted, the banking service platform  10  may also include a communications controller  50  interconnected to the client server  30  and the transceivers R 1 , . . . , RN to route communications between said transceiver R 1 , . . . , RN and said client server  30 . 
     The banking service platform  10  enables a financial institution to provide a broad array of business banking services. Including a client server  30  network between the customer interface and the bank central information processor eliminates the need to re-code data in existing systems and makes the delivery of complex business services, such as remote check processing and image and statement retrieval, as easy to implement as basic consumer services. 
     The banking service platform  10  is designed to operate as a distributed computing environment to give a financial institution a proprietary bank-centric network with the fast, cost-efficient plug-and-play availability offered by third-party vendors. The banking service platform  10  of the present invention is also scalable, fault-tolerant, secure and evolvable; the banking service platform  10  absorbs and accommodates voice, data and video access devices, and may take advantage of further advances in new areas such as computer telephony as they are developed. The present invention enables financial institutions to provide access through gateway  40  to the providers P 1 , P 2 , P 3 , P 4 , . . . , PN of many financial and non-financial information, products and services, such as brokerage, travel, shopping, etc. Unlike third-party systems that limit a customer&#39;s offering to those that the third party can develop, the banking service platform  10  of the present invention allows a financial institution to plug into other existing products and services almost anywhere in the marketplace at almost any time, and offer these products and services to the financial institution&#39;s customers. Once the banking service platform  10  is in place, the financial institution can create and implement its own new products and services to meet the financial institution&#39;s marketing objectives while maintaining a direct relational connection with the customer in the bank&#39;s own identity. 
     Current cardcentric systems offer only basic functions, such as balance inquiry, transaction information, funds transfer and bill payment (through a non-financial services company vendor). The banking service platform  10  of the present invention is an open-ended structure that enables a financial institution to provide the services that cardcentric systems can provide as well as many more current and new services. Besides balance inquiry, transaction information, funds transfer and bill payment, the present invention enables a financial institution to provide bill payment through a financial services company vendor or a non-financial services company vendor. The present invention also enables a financial institution to provide access to brokerage investment, brokerage information, loan applications, loan account reviews, commercial banking, other financial products and services available from third parties, non-financial products and services that the financial institution&#39;s customers may desire, from ordering pizza or flowers to purchasing jewelry and planning a honeymoon—and any service that the financial institution considers to be commercially desirable to its customers. 
     The banking service platform  10  is a scalable, distributed environment in which the service platform removes the networking function from the costly, time-consuming, disruptive arena of hardware installation, reporting of data and all of the other difficulties that are typically involved in creating a proprietary network. The banking service platform  10  will run with a variety of hardware, or combination of hardware, that is in use today or may be installed in the future. The banking service platform  10  will network smoothly among a variety of operating systems, a financial institution can use data from UNIX, NT and OS/2 environments simultaneously—joining it with voice and video transmission at the same time—through the banking service platform  10 . The design of the present invention makes the banking service platform  10  scalable; even a small or mid-size bank can affordably make these services available to a relative small base of customers. At the same time, the platform  10 , with appropriate adaptations, can grow to serve millions of users simultaneously, initiating millions of transactions with substantially continuous availability. 
     In the past, fault-tolerant systems have been developed that ensure that the system will not shut down. These systems comprise a complete, parallel tandem system that can pick up for the main system in a few seconds. Unfortunately, this significantly increases hardware and software costs, and transactions can still be lost if the failure is in any part of the network other than the fault-tolerant node. The banking service platform  10  embeds fault-tolerance in the software, creating a low-cost synchronous transition, so the financial institution does not lose a transaction. With the present invention, the financial institution can rely on a high percent availability and reliability in the network links and nodes. 
     The banking service platform  10  also includes means for encryption at one or more levels of the interconnection and relationship of the platform to secure a direct and relational connection between a customer, bank and third party. Thus, the financial institution&#39;s customers can be assured that their electronic transactions and communications are safe and secure and that their accounts are protected. 
     The banking service platform  10  is evolvable with the capability to enable a financial institution to create and offer products and services unique to the financial institution. These new products and services can then be compatible with the banking service platform  10  to enable the financial institution&#39;s customers to access and use these new products and services. The banking service platform is operated and controlled by the financial institution and has the capability to operate across a wide range of bandwidths. The banking service platform  10  is accessible via narrow bandwidth transmissions for customers who wish to use traditional telephones or early smart phones. The platform  10  can also fully utilize the potential of wide bandwidth transmission. The banking service platform  10  may be video-ready, and, as access devices become available to consumers, accessible from video kiosks, video phones and interactive TV monitors. A financial institution with the banking service platform  10  may offer live video conferencing simultaneously with real-time data transmission. This allows a customer of the financial institution with the system to have full access to a banking experience at any time, from a remote location, as complete as if the customer walked into a branch office of the financial institution and received in-person customer attention. 
     The banking service platform  10  provides a flexible, robust service environment to create and add new products and services off-line or on-line. New products and services are downloadable from the platform  10 . The gateway  40  may be available for video networks such as the 155 m/sec ATM/SONET (video) Network. The banking service platform  10  enables customers to use financial and non-financial information, products and services accessible through the gateway  40 , which include catalog ordering and other transactions with a third party whereby the cost of an order or transaction placed by a customer is concurrently charged in real to time the customer&#39;s account at the financial institution that has the customer relationship with the bank, as a result of means in the bank central information processor for identifying and debiting that customer&#39;s account with respect to instructions regarding particular transactions. 
     As shown in FIGS. 2A and 2B, the customer operable transceiver screen displays may be controlled by a PC at the customer operable transceiver location. Account information may be accessed from the bank mainframe. The bank can choose to have advertisements and/or other information about the bank displayed on the screens for customer attraction purposes. On the customer operable transceiver, it is preferable that all of the screens have the option for the customer to choose to have a face-to-face video conversation with a banker. This allows the customer to obtain real-time video interaction with a banker from any screen within the flow of screens, so the customer&#39;s spontaneous responses to menu displays are not lost and so that a customer does not have to go back to an earlier screen in order to get video access to a banker. 
     It is also a feature of the invention that when the customer registers his/her request for a connection by video with a banker, the last screen that the customer was looking at on the display  36  will be shown to the banker when the video call is connected. This enables the banker to know which screen that the customer was interested in immediately before the customer made the choice to have video access to the banker. The customer may register his/her request for a connection by video with the banker by a variety of means, including the pressing of an area or “button” on a touch screen, pressing a key on a keyboard connected to the customer operable transceiver, by voice, and other means known in the art. 
     As shown in FIG. 3, when the customer makes the choice for video access to a banker, the call distributor  60  receives the request from the customer operable transceiver and distributes the call to an available video banker. Upon receipt of a request, the distributor will direct the request to an available banker or place the received request in queue if all available bankers are occupied. The banker receiving a request from the call distributor  60  establishes a video connection from the banker&#39;s location to the requesting customer operable transceiver through the access gateway. This can be done manually, automatically, through a programmed modem connecting the system and switch or other means. Thus, the call distributor  60  routes the requests from the customer operable transceivers to an available banker from among a plurality of bankers and if there are no available bankers to take the call at that time, the call distributor  60  puts the voice call in a queue until a banker is available to take that particular call. Hence, the service platform  10  provides a method for video connection that allows video calls to hold, queue, transfer and conference in the context of an overall call management system. 
     In the prior art, even if dedicated video lines between each customer operable transceiver and each banker were provided the only alternative available to a customer would be to receive a busy signal on the video line if a banker were occupied and the customer&#39;s video requests would not be queued and directed to the next available banker. Further, in such a system, no efficiency in the utilization of a banker or speed in the attention given to a customer is realized. A dedicated video line would cause a customer to receive a busy signal instead of being in queue for attention by the next available banker. The present invention also provides for overload and disaster recovery. In the system of the invention, once the banker is available, the request for video connection is directed to the banker and a video connection is made by the banker to the corresponding customer operable transceiver so that a live connection may be established by the banker through the access gateway, and if the customer operable transceiver is so equipped, a two-way video conference between the customer and the banker can take place. If a predetermined period of time passes before a banker is available to take the video call, the call will be directed over other communications link  68  to another banker TB who does not have video access but who can talk to the customer and see if the customer&#39;s needs can be handled by voice telephony or audio through the access gateway. This banker TB is typically one of a plurality of bankers with voice access. This banker TB is connected to the central information processor  20  via communications link  68 . 
     Once the video connection is enabled, an interactive video of the banker is shown on a portion, or possibly all, of the display screen  36  at the customer operable transceiver. FIG. 4 shows a display screen  36  at the customer operable transceiver with a video of a banker shown on a portion of the display screen  36 . Also, a video of the customer is shown on a portion, or all, of the display screen of the banker&#39;s terminal if the customer&#39;s customer operable transceiver is equipped with video capabilities. It is preferable that the respective videos of the banker and of the customer are shown on the periphery or in a comer of the respective display screen and that it does not take up more than about ¼ of the area of the display screen. 
     This video connection between the customer and the banker is essentially in real time. While current video image capability is about 15-30 frames per second, the frames per second will increase over time due to technical advances and the video image will be clearer. This video connection also contains audio so that the banker and customer can talk to each other about various financial services, products and information if the customer&#39;s customer operable transceiver is so equipped. 
     Once introductions of the banker is made over the video connection, the banker can cause information to appear on the display screen  36  of the customer operable transceiver. This information may include a variety of financial services, products, and information available to the customer, and may even be an image of a loan application or other document that is specific to a transaction that the customer would like to pursue. 
     Having described the invention in detail, those skilled in the art will appreciate that, given the present disclosure, modifications may be made to the invention without departing from the spirit of the inventive concept herein described. Therefore, it is not intended that the scope of the invention be limited to the specific and preferred embodiments illustrated and described. Rather, it is intended that the scope of the invention be determined by the appended claims.