a financial institution can provide financial services to a plurality of remote devices , such as personal computers , personal data assistants , screen phones , automatic teller machines , external service providers , and internally to staff terminals and individual branches . by separating the components of the system into independent components , the system and method can be developed and tested on a component level rather than the entire system level , thereby reducing the development and maintenance cycle time . the system and method operate in sessions and can employ a dialog component for gathering information from a customer , a rule broker component for providing answers to the various legal and regulatory rules in a particular country , a language man component for selecting appropriate language , a transaction executor component for performing transactions , and a presentation manager component for formatting outputs to the customer .