Six Months In, State Treasurer Brad Briner is Leaving His Mark on North Carolina Government

Thanks for joining us this Saturday morning. 

Brad Briner is six months into his new job as state treasurer. It’s been a busy start to a first term: working to engineer a turnaround of North Carolina’s pension fund underperformance, and convincing lawmakers to transition to a new model for pension fund governance, and handling a near-insolvent State Health Plan, and…

Today, we’re checking in on Briner’s progress in resolving some very complicated challenges. We’ll get right to it.

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A Morehead Scholar at UNC-Chapel Hill, Briner earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. Before he won election to the state treasurer’s office, Briner was Co-Chief Investment Officer at Willet Advisors, where his team managed Michael Bloomberg’s personal and philanthropic investments.

It’s hard to conjure a stronger resume for the elected official in charge of North Carolina’s 12-figure pension fund.

Briner ran with an emphasis on his prolific business background, arguing (truthfully) that the returns on North Carolina’s pension fund lagged other states – a reality that left billions of dollars on the table that could have gone to retirees and other state budget needs. 

“We have performed about 2.5% lower annually than the median state pension plan,” then-candidate Brad Briner said during a PBS interview last year. “The objective is to close that gap. So 2.5%, each year, times $125 billion, ends up being a lot of money.”

Briner argued that the state’s investment strategy was too conservative: “The average pension in this country is roughly 70% stocks and 30% bonds. We’re roughly 50/50. And so I think we need to get closer to the median to raise our expected return to a level that makes the math work for the pension plan.”

In his first months on the job, Briner adjusted the pension portfolio to better align with a strategy to earn higher returns. The six-month numbers are in, and the pension fund outperformed its target by nearly three percentage points, or $3.6 billion.

Briner alone has legal authority to manipulate the pension portfolio however he’d like. That, too, is a reality Briner campaigned to change.

North Carolina is one of only three states in the country with a “sole fiduciary” model for managing the state employee pension fund. That model means a single person has responsibility for managing more than $130 billion. 

“New York and Connecticut are the other two sole fiduciaries,” Briner said last year, “both of whom have people in jail for the obvious implication of a sole fiduciary that an immoral person can abuse that power. So I think for that reason alone, sole fiduciary doesn’t make sense.”

Briner lobbied lawmakers to change state law by doing away with the sole fiduciary model and instead creating an investment board to vote on decisions. He got his wish last month, when the legislature passed House Bill 506 and Gov. Josh Stein signed it into law. Beginning in 2026, a five-member committee with appointees from the House, Senate, governor, and treasurer will determine the state’s pension fund investment mix.

That Briner succeeded in winning a substantive policy outcome this legislative session, which has been dogged by infighting, speaks to the political capital he’s accumulated in just a short time on the political scene. Briner has won praise from Republicans and Democrats in part because of his data-driven decision-making and focus on problem-solving. 

Briner has also had to navigate another charged policy challenge: the State Health Plan’s financial predicament. The Plan faces potential insolvency with a $1.4 billion deficit predicted over the next two years. There are only two ways out of this math problem, and neither is popular: cut health benefits or raise premiums.

Briner is not solely responsible for the Plan – the State Health Plan Board of Trustees makes all final decisions – but administering it does fall under his department’s purview, making him the face of it. Over the past several months, the Plan’s Board of Trustees has foreshadowed impending rate hikes. Briner has been relentlessly open about what’s likely to come and why. 

Over the campaign season, Briner’s vision was met with strong opposition. His opponent in the general election, along with media outlets like NC Newsline did their best to highlight pitfalls of change. They spotlighted, for example, arguments that said shifting to a different governance model wouldn’t benefit the state’s public employees or retirees. Coverage rolled in celebrating how the State Employees Association of North Carolina’s (SEANC) political arm, the North Carolina Association of Educators’ PAC, and the NCAE Great Public Schools Fund endorsed Briner’s opponent.   

Nonetheless, it’s unlikely a newly elected official, new to politics and policymaking, has faced a series of challenges this complex and impactful in recent North Carolina history. In just six months, Briner has begun to leave an unmistakable mark on one of the most consequential roles in North Carolina government. He retooled the state’s $130 billion pension fund, achieved early gains, persuaded lawmakers to reform a decades-old governance structure, and took ownership of a looming health plan crisis that threatens coverage for hundreds of thousands of public employees.

Briner’s approach – analytical, transparent, and unusually nonpartisan – has earned him rare bipartisan credibility in a deeply divided political environment. The true tests of his tenure lie ahead, particularly as the State Health Plan’s fiscal reckoning nears. But if the early returns are any indication, North Carolina’s new treasurer is adept at managing crises and reshaping the institutions at the center of them.