N.C. Council of State & Executive Branch 2025 in Review – Part 4: State Treasurer Brad Briner

Thank you for joining us this Saturday morning. Today, we’re finishing our series on what key members of the Council of State accomplished in 2025, with a focus on Treasurer Brad Briner.

We’ll get right to it.

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“Sometimes I do actually suck at investing,” Briner wrote last month in a folksy “Finance Fridays” column published in the Coastland Times. “While it is better not to have bad days, or bad weeks/months, the truth is we all have them. The trick to success is in recovering from those tough times.”

Briner spent his career overseeing investment strategy for ultra-high-net-worth individuals and institutions. He could probably corral a ride on a jet to catch the gold medal hockey game in Milan tomorrow if he wanted to. But instead, Briner is focusing his energy on innovating state finances and, yes, penning monthly personal finance columns aimed at regular North Carolinians. 

He took charge of his first elected office in January 2025, inheriting a host of urgent financial concerns. The State Health Plan, which his office oversees, faced insolvency with a 10-figure deficit projected in the next two years. Briner and his team took on the politically delicate task of raising revenue – i.e., premiums – on state employees, the first increase in nearly a decade (hence the impending insolvency). 

They enacted a multi-month public rollout strategy, engaging public employee stakeholders and explaining in precise detail the nature of the math problem. There were, of course, some squeals and complaints, but Briner implemented an innovative tiering system such that the lowest-paid public servants would absorb the smallest premium increase. He announced his plans to turn this year to the other side of the ledger: health costs, where North Carolina ranks among the worst in the country.

That word – innovative – is how Briner hopes to define the spirit of his tenure. He brings a technocrat’s competence to a political office, along with the confidence of knowing that if this is his only four years as a politician, life will go on just fine for him. 

He spearheaded the overthrow of the state’s structure for managing its massive $140 billion pension fund, arguing that the old sole fiduciary model will invite self-dealing and corruption for some treasurer at some point in the future. Briner successfully lobbied the legislature to replace it with the five-member North Carolina Investment Authority Board, staffed by a former leader of Saudi Aramco’s pension fund. The state’s pension fund earned 11% during the last fiscal year with $16 billion in returns.

What’s more, Briner in 2025 announced the state’s first partnership between an agency and an AI company. The treasurer’s office collaborated with ChatGPT creator OpenAI on “ways to safely and responsibly use ChatGPT in combination with publicly available data to increase operational efficiency and enhance public service delivery to North Carolina’s residents.”

Those are the headline grabbers for 2025. But behind the scenes, Briner has also emerged as an integral voice in thinking creatively about expensive state-backed projects. Public and private leaders seek out his advice on how to structure complex financing. His influence on some ventures may become public in the future, but if it doesn’t, that’s okay with him, too.

In general, Briner has brought a true business expert’s vision for innovation and efficiency to one of the state’s most complicated elected offices.

In a political era that often rewards noise over know-how, Briner’s first year shows that competence still counts – a lot. From steadying the State Health Plan to modernizing pension governance to testing how emerging technologies can make government work smarter, Briner has approached public office the way seasoned investors approach volatile markets: with discipline and a long time horizon. 

If 2025 was his proof of concept, the years ahead will test whether that technocratic formula can permanently shift expectations for what North Carolinians should demand from the stewards of their public dollars.