Patent ID: 8401945

Claim:
A fee evaluation tool for evaluating a proposed fee on behalf of a professional, comprising: a first computer comprising: a first memory; and a first processor coupled to the first memory, the first processor for receiving fee parameters for a proposed client account, the fee parameters received by the first processor including: (a) a product type for the proposed client account, (b) a proposed fee for the proposed client account, and (c) at least one numerical parameter selected from the group consisting of: (i) an account asset amount for the proposed client account, (ii) a relationship asset amount for the proposed client account, and (iii) a breakdown of components in an asset mix for the proposed client account; and a second computer comprising: a second memory having a historical accounts database stored in the second memory; and a second processor coupled to the second memory, the second processor for receiving fee parameters from the first computer and retrieving historical account attributes from the database by: (a) choosing a subset of account records from the historical accounts stored in the database that corresponds to the product type defined by the fee parameters; (b) identifying and ranking a plurality of nearest neighbor historical accounts from the chosen subset of account records based on the at least one numerical parameter defined by the fee parameters, each historical account being associated with a historical fee; and (c) finding the highest and lowest historical fees among the plurality of nearest neighbor historical accounts; (d) transmitting to the first computer historical account attributes capable of display as a display graph showing a range of historical fees of the nearest neighbor historical accounts from lowest to highest and showing the proposed fee defined by the fee parameters relative to the nearest neighbor historical fees; wherein during identification of nearest neighbor historical accounts, the second processor: plots historical account records on a grid having multidimensional space, wherein each historical account record is plotted according to at least one of the following dimensions: the account assets, the household assets, and the components of the asset mix; plots the proposed client account on the grid based on the same dimensions as the plotted historical account records; calculates the normalized distance between the proposed client account and historical account records selected from the grid; and selects as the nearest neighbor historical account records a subset of the historical accounts having a determined smallest normalized distance from the proposed client account.