A Note from the President

There is no doubt that 2020 has been a whirlwind year for everyone, and we are more than ready to leave it behind and enter into an exciting new chapter in 2021. Covisum Founder and President, Joe Elsasser, CFP^®,  highlights some of Covisum's best and biggest moments from the past year and what subscribers can look forward to in 2021.

Lookin' Back at 2020

Hi, I'm Joe Elsasser, President and Founder of Covisum. Welcome to the end of 2020, or more appropriately, I should say, the beginning of 2021. I think many of us are probably ready to move on from this very interesting year. You know, at the beginning of the year, we were running all around the country from conference to conference, meeting with advisors like you and talking about our big initiatives for 2020 and the future roadmap of Covisum.

Some of the biggest things from 2019—we're unifying all four of our tools Social Security, Timing®, Tax Clarity®, SmartRisk®, and Income InSight® into a single unified portal. When a client comes into your office with that singular question, like:

• What should I do about Social Security?
• My tax bill is bothering me.
• Am I going to get clobbered in the next market downturn

Advisors can use Covisum software to transition clients into a holistic planning process that ultimately serves them better and makes them a client for life for your practice.

In 2020, a big focus was improving the user experience and the way those tools work together inside the portal. Also, equipping you with digital marketing methods by recognizing that those digital marketing methods are going to be critical, whether in 2020 or going forward. We happened to luck out and launch digital marketing kits for all four of our tools throughout the course of 2020. So, if you haven't activated those yet, and you're a current subscriber, be sure to do that. They really can make a big impact, particularly in this current climate.

Looking Forward to 2021

Now coming into 2021, we're really excited because our focus on the user experience will continue. You'll see us adding features, but you'll also see the way in which you access the features and the interoperability of the different tools inside the portal continue to improve.

APIs For All Software Solutions

Enterprise customers will be able to access the calculations that power all of our software solutions. We've always had Social Security Timing available as an API, but now Tax Clarity and Income InSight will be available as an API. Harvesting patterns inside other applications will be something that we expect quite a few enterprises to onboard in 2021.

Cybersecurity

Throughout the course of 2020, we had been preparing for an ISO audit. That's a pretty significant thing in the world of IT. It encompasses a huge variety of processes, and then ultimately you test against those processes. We completed our internal ISO audit in 2020. In 2021, we will become ISO certified. We expect that to be done early in the year likely by the end of the first quarter.

Digital Marketing

The second major initiative that we'll have through the course of 2021 is extending that digital marketing to some of our calculations. We are planning on offering consumer-facing calculators that our advisors can use to help attract and qualify leads. We're making some calculations that are currently only available to enterprises through APIs, to power widgets that live either in client websites or in client-facing tools. 

Last Year, This Year, Next Year, and Beyond...

Those are things that are on the horizon for 2021, but of course, throughout this entire process, our number one goal is to focus on our advisor clients. So as you are using the tools throughout the course of this year, as you're implementing your marketing plans, which will likely be more digital in 2021 than they have been at any point in the past, please reach out to us. Please make suggestions. Please continue to keep those fantastic ideas flowing, because those are what help us improve over the longterm. Thanks again for your support through 2020 and we look forward to helping you grow your business even further in 2021!