4 Hartford Business Journal • September 21, 2015 www.HartfordBusiness.com
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HEDCO
of the heads of major insurers who called the
Hartford region home: Aetna, The Phoenix,
Travelers, The Hartford, and former Connect-
icut General Life (now Cigna), Rosa recalled.
They were motivated, he said, by mounting
complaints from prospective and actual entre-
preneurs about the difficulty in obtaining cred-
it to run or expand their businesses.
A reluctant Hartford City Council at that
time appropriated $7,500 to the fledgling
microlender. HEDCO subsequently issued
three loans at $2,500 apiece, whose borrow-
ers within short order repaid them with inter-
est. Impressed, the council funneled more
money into HEDCO, which fed still more
loans. Today, the city still appropriates about
$250,000 annually to HEDCO, said Rosa, an
accountant who joined HEDCO in 1979.
HEDCO's insurance partners also helped its
mission in other ways. Travelers, for instance,
set up a bonding pro-
gram for contractors
— essentially a guar-
antee that a public
works project will get
done. Without such
"guarantees,'' it's next
to impossible, Rosa
and Hawkins say, for
women and minority
contractors to even
bid for such work,
much less qualify for
bank financing.
HEDCO has run the DECD's Minority
Bonding Guarantee program since 2007. What
started out as a maximum bond available of $1
million has grown to $20 million, widening the
scale of projects available to small contractors.
In exchange for HEDCO's help with
financing, borrowers agree to participate
in all of its business training and coaching
programs. Participants are not charged a fee
their first year.
"We've been at this thing for 40 years,''
Rosa said, "so we've developed some knowl-
edge. We know what works, what doesn't.'' n
Sam Hamilton, left, is one of only three HEDCO CEOs in its 40-year history. Kim Hawkins
is chief operating officer. Fernando Rosa, right, with HEDCO since 1979, is the new CEO.
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