Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com • May 20, 2019 • Hartford Business Journal 11 FOCUS CUSTOMIZE YOUR CAPITAL SOLUTION TODAY Contact Richard Carr RCarr@communityp.com | 646.822.9347 CLOSED: $1.4 Million Freddie Mac SBL • Tamarack Apartments • 24 Units in West Haven, CT UNMATCHED SERVICE AND EXECUTION Fannie Mae • FHA • Freddie Mac Multifamily Capital Solutions CONSTRUCTION | REFINANCE | ACQUISITION CONVENTIONAL FINANCING | AFFORDABLE HOUSING SMALL BALANCE LOANS | FLEXIBLE BRIDGE FINANCING Quality Construction + Butler Manufacturing = Repeat Customers www.borghesibuilding.com © 2011 BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. All rights reserved. Butler Manufacturing™ is a division of BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. 2155 East Main Street • Torrington, Connecticut 06790 Dupont Storage Systems, Bristol, CT | 2009 | 32,500 sq. ft., 46' tall 2012 | Addition — 15,300 sq. ft. Contact us at 860-482-7613 or visit us on the web. training — From securing company tech devices when off premises to frequently changing passwords, ev- ery single staff member needs to be educated about possible vulnerabili- ties in their day-to-day interactions. Encryption protection — If your company sends sensitive information electronically, encryption is a neces- sity. There are many tools available, but unfortunately setting them up is still a job for an IT professional. Once they're setup, however, it's as easy as typing ENCRYPT in the subject line of your message and the email sys- tem takes care of the rest. Encryption is also available for data stored on your hard drives. Mobile devices and com- puter operating systems now allow the entire hard drive to be encrypted in a way that is transparent to the user. Without it, your data is vulnerable. Up-to-date software — Unpatched or outdated software can expose risk as much as not having antivirus. Keep- ing software up to date closes security holes being exploited by hackers. Backup and recovery plan — Implement a solid backup plan. First determine what needs to be backed up: documents, databases, etc. Deter- mine retention requirements, choose a schedule and methodology, as well as the technology, product and ven- dor. Establish a data restore protocol and schedule and review regularly. Don't have a false sense of security by thinking you can "set it and forget it." Eric Buhrendorf is the CEO and senior consultant of EVERNET Consulting LLC in Hartford. boom, announcing last fall it raised $10 million in Series A funding from its venture-capital partners, including Nyca Partners, Allianz Life Ventures and others. That money is being used almost entirely on expanding Covr's salesforce and furthering its invest- ments in technology. Remaining dollars were leveraged to setup in Hartford. Covr has now raised more than $20 million, which has propelled the company into CB Insights' list of top 60 brands in insurance technology. Kalen expects Covr's fundraising to continue to climb with the company's new Hartford presence. The startups that have gone through the Hartford insurtech accelerator have raised $39 million over the last two years, which shows there is an appetite for invest- ment here, he said. "It was very easily recognized by our venture-capital backers that Hart- ford was a great location to start a sales and market- ing office for a digitally enabled technology com- pany," he said. "It all happened quite naturally." While Covr, founded in 2012 as 1 Click Coverage, has built a large client base of its own, the insurtech significantly grew its footprint over the last year as it began partnering with the industry's largest financial planning software used by advisors. Covr software is currently used by 24,000 financial advisors, and now helps support a portion of the 100,000 advisors being served by MoneyGuidePro, which was built by software company PIETech. Covr developed the first life in- surance application that was fully integrated with the MoneyGuidePro financial software in April 2018. In March, MoneyGuidePro was acquired by financial services giant Envestnet Inc. for $500 million, giving Covr an even wider net to cast from. "Not many financial advisors talk about protecting assets with life insur- ance, long-term care or disability income products," he said. "Now that we are in a partnership with MoneyGuidePro, we help facilitate those conversations for ad- visors and clients to get the advice they need to protect their retirement plan." Why Hartford? For Kalen, Covr's expansion in Hart- ford gives the company more footing to stand out in the highly competitive, fast-growing insurtech industry. Kalen, who raises capital for Covr, said the company may have appeared as an outsider if it had landed in New York or Silicon Valley, which are already crowded global hubs of technology and innovation. Hartford also provides Covr a top industry workforce to pull from, he said, listing off life insurance giants like The Hartford, Prudential, Voya, MetLife and others that have given the city an insurance-centered identity. Plus, when you add in the recent debuts of IT giant Infosys, Stanley Black & Decker's new innovation hub and other initiatives, Kalen sees momentum he'd like to leverage. "It's energizing to see all this innova- tion that is coming back into the city," Kalen said. "The talent is good today, and the talent over the next three years is going to be even better." Covr Financial Technologies leases space in Hartford's Boat Building. HBJ PHOTO | JOE COOPER

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