WO2001082149A2

WO2001082149A2 - Method and system for insuring an investment in stocks and the like

Info

Publication number: WO2001082149A2
Application number: PCT/EP2001/004339
Authority: WO
Inventors: Angelo Medeghini
Original assignee: Angelo Medeghini
Priority date: 2000-04-21
Filing date: 2001-04-17
Publication date: 2001-11-01
Also published as: AU7394701A; ITMI20000908A1; ITMI20000908A0; IT1317576B1

Description

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR INSURING AN INVESTMENT IN

STOCKS AND THE LIKE

Technical Field

The present invention relates to a method and a device for insuring an investment in stocks and the like, with particular reference to stipulation, buying and selling carried out with telematic means.

Background Art

Recent technological developments and the diffusion of low-cost telematic tools is changing radically market operating methods as regards any operation for trading or insuring tangible and intangible property.

Moreover, the global diffusion of telematic networks, with particular reference to the Internet (the telematic network par excellence) and the exponential growth of the number of private users connected to said networks have opened, and are still opening, new possibilities, creating new requirements also from the commercial point of view and almost revolutionizing the behaviors leading and related to the normal purchase/sale relation.

The main side effect is that the client no longer needs to physically go to a shop or office to make a purchase or stipulate a contract; thanks to telematics, he can instead act from home or from his workplace, for himself and/or as a broker. Currently there are, in fact, many firms, including banks and insurance companies, which already offer a virtual shop or office

(constituted by an Internet site) which a user can connect to simply by entering the URL (or address) of the virtual shop in his Internet browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer™ or Netscape Navigator™, which is the geometric locus, figuratively speaking, prepared for the completion of the contract.

Once the user has entered the virtual shop, he can examine the products on sale, fill a virtual shopping cart and make his purchases of products or services directly from his armchair at home. Several insurance companies, on their part, offer fully automated systems for taking out insurance policies over the Internet. The most widespread type of insurance in this respect is certainly car insurance, which on the one hand is dictated by the legal requirements related to public liability insurance, which ensure a customer base which is as large as the number of circulating cars, and on the other hand is dictated by the need of many users to protect themselves against possible theft.

Moreover, an increasing number of users relies on quotations stipulated through telematic channels, which allow transparent and independent research into the various rates applied by the different companies.

In particular, the telematic approach has become absolutely dominant in the field of negotiations related to the stock market.

Up to a few years ago, investors and savers were forced to contact a

Stocks Bureau in order to buy and sell stocks, subscribing a buy and sell ' order without the possibility to be satisfactorily informed as to the behavior of the stocks through the day and therefore without being able to effectively react to the variations of one or more quotations.

Today, instead, anyone is capable of knowing the trend of a stock in real time (thanks to the most disparate telematic sources: Teletext, mobile - telephones, dedicated circuits, and most of all Internet networks) and of intervening directly at any time in the trade and/or in the trend of third-party negotiations in progress.

The number of people directly involved in stock-exchange and/or securities negotiations has therefore risen greatly, significantly increasing both the number of exchanges made daily and, accordingly, the growth rate and/or volatility of the market.

Investment on the stock exchange and/or in listed stocks, which used to be mostly medium- or long-term, has now become more aggressive and highly speculative, with a consequently faster oscillation of quotations. Therefore, while on the one hand the user has gained the possibility to act and work directly on the stock market, on the other hand he must handle a much higher risk than in the past and remains exposed to said risk constantly and dangerously. Disclosure of the Invention The aim of the present invention is to introduce a method and a system which, by providing a synergy among the above-described methods and systems (i.e., among the possibility to make purchases through telematic channels, the possibility to stipulate an insurance contract through telematic channels, and the possibility to trade on the stock exchange through telematic channels), allows

~ a user to request, automatically and with the necessary immediacy and timeliness, an insurance coverage for each trade of stocks or the like which he carries out;

— an insurance company, or similar organization, to sell its services in a manner and with a timeliness hitherto unknown in relation to the market of reference; and

— a broker to qualify, with this accessory, the quality of his consulting and/or brokerage.

Within the scope of this aim, an object of the present invention is to _ provide a method and a system which allow

— the trader to select an item to be purchased in terms of type and quantity, and to simultaneously select the terms and expiration date of an insurance contract to cover the risk related to the purchase made;

~ the insurance coverage provider to be practically omnipresent and in particular to be present in a timely fashion at the very moment when the trader expresses his request for insurance coverage; and

~ a broker to offer an additional and highly qualified service, capable of attracting in itself a number of traders and investors of desirable quality. This aim, this object and others which will become better apparent from the following description are performed and achieved by a method for purchasing stocks or the like, which consists of a process comprising the steps of:

~ selecting the stocks to purchase;

~ defining the conditions for the insurance coverage of the risk related to said selected stocks;

~ purchasing said selected stocks;

— simultaneously transferring, wholly or partially, the risk of the investment to a provider of insurance services and/or other trader and/or to a system which provides said method; ~ being able to examine, in a timely fashion, the request for coverage, evaluating it according to the general parameters that are available, determining its acceptability and establishing (or pre-establishing) the coverage conditions and the corresponding premiums; and by respective means which provide the above steps. For this purpose, the stocks being traded can be displayed by a user on a telematic terminal (such as the monitor of a computer, a television terminal or a mobile phone or others), setting, for the titles of interest, the intended parameters or conditions for purchase, in order to be able to use the possibility to take out a differentiated insurance contract to cover the _ intended investment.

Advantageously, the insurance coverage can be extended or split over various aspects of the investment, such as for example:

— the invested capital (or part thereof); ~ or the expected gain (or part thereof); — or the opposite in case of sell-off.

Advantageously, the method and the system according to the invention allow the automatic transmission of the data and the interaction with said data by the client, the financial broker, the bank and the insurance service provider, each of which uses his own technical means (such as servers which are mutually reachable by means of telematic networks or equivalent means), providing a synergy between the systems and methods used by each one, aimed at achieving the described new aim, object and functions as well as the described results.

Brief description of the drawings Further characteristics and advantages of the present invention will become better apparent from the following detailed description, given by way of non-limitative example and illustrated by the accompanying figures, wherein:

Figure 1 is a schematic view of the system according to the invention, wherein the servers of the financial broker, the bank and the insurance service provider are sited in three different locations;

Figure 2 is a schematic view, in which the servers of the financial broker, of the bank and of the insurance service provider are sited at a same location; Figure 3 is a schematic view of the graphical interface by way of which a user can select the stocks or other product that he intends to purchase or in any case intends to trade;

Figure 4 is a schematic view of the graphical interface by way of which the user can display the costs for coverage of the risk of the investment, as calculated and made available by the insurance service provider;

Figure 5 is a flowchart of the data according to the claimed method and system.

Ways to carrying out the Invention

Figure 1 is a view of a preferred embodiment of the architecture of the system according to the invention, in which a user 10 connects, by means of a telephone terminal, such as for example a modem 20, to a telematic network 90, particularly the Internet, by means of his provider 30. The connection thus established allows the user to explore the telematic network

90 and to reach the site 50 of a potential provider of services for trading stocks or securities of any kind on one or more stock markets. The user 10, who is now able to know in real time the quotations of the stocks being traded, can decide to buy or sell a given stock or other product on the market chosen among those made available by the financial broker, by means of the graphical interface shown in Figure 3. By means of the field 310, the user selects whether to buy or sell the selected stock.

If he has chosen to buy, the user selects:

~ the quantity to buy 320,

— the buying price 330, — the validity of the order 340,

~ and the condition of the market 350 in which the purchase is to be made. In addition to this, and as an accessory function, the user can decide to insure the investment he is about to make by covering with an insurance policy: -- the capital 365,

~ the intended gain 366,

~ covering the investment both as purchase and as sale, wholly or partially, indicating in the second case the respective percentages of intended cover

367-368. Finally, the user specifies the proposed duration 370 of the insurance contract and the target price 380 of the investment.

With reference to the flowchart of Figure 5, filling in the screen corresponds to the step 510 for preparing for the order on the part of the client 10. The data of the order are now sent to the attention of a financial broker

50, which for the sake of simplicity in description is assumed to coincide, in

Figure 5, with a banking service provider 60.

The financial broker performs a check 520 of the received data, in order to evaluate 525 the completeness and consistency of the entered data. If the data is incomplete or incorrect, he sends to the client a notice in this regard, requesting their completion or revision.

If instead the result is positive, the received data are sent to the insurance service provider, who processes them 530 in order to determine the premium that the client will have to pay in order to obtain the intended insurance protection.

The processing of the data for calculating the insurance premium uses algorithms at the discretion of the insurance service provider, which will take into account various market variables in order to obtain a risk estimate.

Examples of some of the various significant parameters, are the type of stock purchased, its volatility on the current market, the trend of the stock in a given time frame, the duration of the contract that the user wishes to subscribe, and the target price set by the user.

In view of the volatility of the stock market, the insurance premium to be paid by the client can therefore vary even from one moment to the next; accordingly, two similar orders made even a short time after one another can lead to two different insurance premiums; on the other hand, an order which follows another order that has been accepted may not be accepted, without any problem, for a similar subject and in similar conditions; and vice versa.

The response of the insurance service provider is examined 540 also by - the financial broker, who checks 545 whether the risk on the investment proposed by the user has been flagged as insurable by the insurance service provider.

If this is not the case, the user is asked to change the parameters he has entered or to renounce the insurance and/or the transaction. If instead the check is positive, the data summarizing the transaction in progress are sent to the user so that he can evaluate 550 the convenience of the insurance coverage.

Figure 4 shows a screen 400 which summarizes to the user the data he has provided and the response of the insurance service provider. In particular, the insurance costs 420, 425 for the coverage percentages 410, 415 on the investment requested by the user are displayed.

Once the user has confirmed to the financial broker his intention to proceed, in terms both of products to purchase and of acceptance of the insurance conditions, said broker proceeds with a normal purchase request for the stock market, which confirms that the transaction has been executed.

Therefore, a double transaction takes place: on the one hand, the quantity of purchased stocks is credited to the stock deposit account selected by the client at the authorized bank, debiting the value of the purchased stocks to the current account of the client; on the other hand, the insurance contract with the insurance company is activated, and the account of said company is credited with the sum that corresponds to the insurance premium underwritten by the client; at the same time, such sum constitutes a further charge to the current account of the client.

To conclude the procedure, the details of the operation are sent to the client and to the insurance service provider.

In one preferred embodiment shown in Figure 1, the financial broker 50, the bank 60 and the insurance service provider 70 are connected to each other either by means of the Internet itself 90 or by means of different dedicated networks 95, such as for example the network of a credit card circuit, used to exchange data and transactions, which affect the respective databases 51, 61, 71.

In a different preferred embodiment, the three functions mentioned above can also be grouped at a single company 80 which is capable of providing both financial transaction services and insurance services. In this case, the databases 51, 61, 71 can be directly accessed from a server of the company even without the support of an external network.

The description of the above-described preferred embodiments is given of course merely by way of non-limitative example.

The invention thus conceived is susceptible of numerous modifications and variations which can be clearly deduced logically and/or operatively by the expert in the field and all of which are within the protective scope of the inventive concept.

In particular, the terminal that the client uses for data preparation can be of any kind: an Internet browser, as described; or an ATM terminal which can be used at the bank itself; or a television terminal; or a simple telephone.

Likewise, the operations for exchanging data between the user and the financial broker may be performed even by simple verbal exchange, as occurs in conventional systems used for telephone banking, and conventionally on paper media, directly at the bank or financial broker.

The disclosures in Italian Patent Application No. MI2000A000908 from which this application claims priority are incorporated herein by reference.

Claims

1. A method for purchasing stocks or the like, comprising the steps of: ~ selecting one or more stocks to purchase;

~ defining conditions for insurance coverage of the risk related to said selected stocks;

~ purchasing said selected stocks;

~ simultaneously transferring the risk of the investment to a provider of insurance services and/or other trader.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein said selection of stocks to purchase occurs by means of a telematic terminal.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein said telematic terminal displays an interactive graphical interface.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein said definition of the conditions for insurance coverage are differentiated according to invested capital and expected gain.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein said purchase of stocks occurs through a telematic channel.

6. The method according to claim 1, wherein said simultaneous transfer of the investment risk to an insurance service provider occurs after an - estimate of said investment risk and a calculation of the corresponding insurance premium on the part of said insurance service provider.

7. A system for buying stocks or the like, comprising: ~ means for selecting one or more stocks to buy;

~ means for defining conditions for the insurance coverage of said selected stocks;

— means for buying said selected stocks;

— means for simultaneously transferring the investment risk to an insurance service provider.

8. The system according to claim 7, wherein said selection means are constituted by a telematic terminal.

9. The system according to claim 7, wherein said telematic terminal displays an interactive graphical interface.

10. The system according to claim 7, wherein said means for defining the insurance coverage conditions allow to differentiate said coverage according to invested capital and expected gain.

11. The system according to any of claims 7 to 10, comprising: ~ at least one server of a financial broker;

~ at least one server of a banking service provider; ~ at least one server of an insurance service provider; ~ said servers being mutually reachable by means of a telematic network.

12. The system according to claim 11, wherein said telematic network is the Internet.

13. A method for covering the investment risk of stocks or the like, comprising the steps of: ~ identifying one or more stocks whose risk is to be insured or not;

~ defining the conditions for the insurance coverage; ~ transferring the investment risk to an insurance service provider.