FIELD OF THE INVENTION

One embodiment of the invention relates to systems and methods for monitoring changes in a database and, in particular, for monitoring changes to a selected subset of records in the database.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Consumer credit databases, such as those maintained by companies who calculate credit scores, are typically enormous in size and are continually updated to reflect very recent consumer activity details for hundreds of millions of consumers. Many lenders, merchants, and other providers of credit-related products desire to exploit the wealth of data available in these databases. In particular, credit-providers would find it very advantageous to exploit the databases in order to improve or replace, at least in part, their blanket marketing campaigns, in which the credit-providers send out advertisements, make cold phone calls, or otherwise contact large numbers of consumers, based on general selection criteria, with offers of their credit-related products and/or services, in hopes that at least a portion of the contacted consumers will respond to their offers. Unfortunately, such blanket advertisement campaigns often reach consumers who are not eligible for the offers or who are not actively interested in extensions of credit and are therefore less motivated to seriously consider a lender's offer. Industry research indicates that less than 0.1% of contacts made in such blanket campaigns result in a sale.

Information in the consumer credit databases could help the credit-providers identify potentially interested and credit-worthy customers. However, several technical, database-related obstacles have kept credit providers from fully utilizing the potential of the information available from the consumer credit databases. For one, the consumer credit databases are typically organized and optimized for quick extraction of simple bits of information about individual consumers, such as individual credit scores, while allowing the database to continually insert incoming consumer data into its records.

Out of an abundance of caution, credit-providers often prefer to have complex, computationally-expensive, and time-consuming analyses and classifications performed on the database records as part of their identification of prospective customers, in an effort to avoid making the firm offer of credit that is mandated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) to consumers who may later in the process be revealed as being undesirable credit risks.

Furthermore, even if a solution could be found to reconcile the conflicting needs for a constantly available database of individual consumer credit-related activity versus one that allows for time-consuming and complex analytical classifications of consumers, neither model allows the credit provider to make use of newly received information from the last twenty-four hours to identify consumers who are both eligible for a firm offer of credit and are currently interested in obtaining additional credit.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Embodiments of systems and methods are described for automatically analyzing information from an online consumer credit database in order to identify consumers who both meet a credit-provider's criteria for making a firm offer of credit and are also deemed, based on extremely recent indications in the database, known as trigger events, to be currently interested in obtaining credit. The systems and methods further generate timely notifications of the identified prospective customers to the credit-provider. In certain embodiments, the prospect notifications may be generated daily, multiple times per day, or at another advantageous frequency, and may thus more accurately identify consumers who are likely to be currently interested in specific products and/or services.

Systems and methods are described for identifying a subset of interest from a general population and for monitoring a database of daily activity logs associated with the general population in order to identify database entries indicative of an occurrence of a pre-defined trigger event that is associated with a member of the subset of interest. In particular, systems and methods are described that allow a massive database of daily activity logs to be monitored to identify trigger events that have occurred within the past twenty-four hours or other very recent time period. Embodiments are described that may be advantageously used by a provider of credit-related products and/or services who wishes to accurately target prospective customers, identified by the system, based on occurrence of a trigger event, as being in a decision-making phase of credit shopping, for purposes of making a timely and targeted offering relevant to the customers' current activities.

In one embodiment, where clients are entities such as lenders and other providers of credit-related products and services, a subset of the consumer population is identified as meeting a client's set of pre-screen criteria that define, for example, consumers to whom the client would be willing to make a firm offer of credit. Daily credit-related events associated with members of the subset are monitored so that when a pre-determined event, such as a credit-related inquiry, takes place with respect to a member of the subset, the lender is notified and may take a desired action. For example, the lender may wish to present an offer of pre-approved credit to the identified member(s) of the population subset for whom a trigger event has been identified.

An embodiment of an electronic system for providing notifications about credit-related events is described. The system includes: an electronic list of consumers, a database of credit-related information, an electronic set of campaign criteria, and an automated selection system. The electronic list of consumers identifies consumers who have been pre-screened to be eligible for a firm offer of credit. The database of credit-related information includes data about consumers that is updated at least daily to include information about events that have occurred since a last update of the database, wherein the events include events of at least one of the following types: newly-established consumer credit relationships, consumer credit inquiries, and consumer line-of-credit events. The electronic set of campaign criteria describes at least one type of event that is of interest to an entity associated with an offer of credit. The automated selection system is configured to monitor the database at least daily and to identify consumers on the list who are associated with newly-added inquiries or new credit relationships which are of the at least one type of event described in the set of campaign criteria. In some embodiments, the system includes a prospect list generation system that receives a list of the consumers identified each day by the selection system and that makes the list available to the entity associated with the offer of credit.

An embodiment of a computer-implemented method of providing notifications about credit-related occurrences is described. The method comprises: (a) obtaining an electronic list of consumers who meet a set of pre-screen criteria for an offer of credit; (b) monitoring a database of consumer credit-related events to identify credit-related occurrences associated with one or more consumers on the list, wherein the occurrences have been added to the database within a time period of interest; and (c) providing a notification of the consumers associated with the identified credit-related occurrences.

An embodiment of a method of providing notifications about credit-related events is described. The method includes obtaining a list of names of consumers who meet a set of pre-screen criteria for a credit offer and receiving information that identifies one or more types of credit-related events as indicating that a consumer is currently interested in obtaining credit. The method further includes monitoring a database of consumer credit-related events that is updated at least daily to identify credit-related events associated with one or more names on the list, wherein the events have been added to the database within a time period of interest, and providing a notification of the names associated with the identified credit-related events.

An embodiment of a system for providing notifications about credit-related events is described. The system includes: a pre-screen list generation system, a database of credit-related information about consumers, a set of campaign criteria, and a prospect list generation system. The pre-screen list generation system is configured to receive from a credit-provider a set of eligibility criteria. The pre-screen list generation system is further configured to use the eligibility criteria to identify consumers listed in a consumer database who are eligible for a firm offer of credit from the credit-provider and to generate a pre-screen list of the identified names. The database of credit-related information about consumers is updated at least daily to include information about events that have occurred since a last update of the database, wherein the events include newly-established consumer credit relationships and inquiries about a consumer's credit score. The set of campaign criteria describes at least one type of event that is of interest to the credit-provider as being indicative of a consumer's current interest in obtaining credit. The selection system is configured to monitor the database and capture results at least daily and to identify consumers on the pre-screen list who are associated with one or more events that have been added to the database since a last monitoring, the events being of a type described in the campaign criteria. The prospect list generation system receives a list of the consumers identified each day by the selection system and makes the list available to the entity wishing to offer credit.

Neither this summary nor the following detailed description defines or limits the invention. The invention is defined by the claims.

