Brad Briner has been busy since taking over as North Carolina’s state treasurer and it touting much of this work as the year comes to an end. He pointed to efforts to dig the State Health Plan (SHP) out of a financial hole as among his greatest achievement.
A $1.3 billion deficit was projected in 2027, but changes implemented by the SHP board and the General Assembly were able to reverse this trend and bring the plan about $30 million above its reserve rate, according to Thomas Friedman, executive administrator of the SHP. Friedman spoke about this success story on a livestream Q&A with reporters, hosted by State Treasurer Brad Briner in early December.
Friedman said their trend this year is running higher than in previous years, and part of that is due to how the plan’s third-party administrator, Aetna, pays its claims.
The plan’s original projected deficit was $507 million in 2026 and between $800 million and $900 million in 2027.
In August, the board agreed to raise plan premiums for the first time on a sliding scale based on income, with the smallest increases going to the lowest-paid state employees.
Former State Treasurer Dale Folwell maintained a policy of not increasing premiums, instead using cash reserves to offset increases; and Briner did not hesitate to suggest that that decision contributed to the dire financial situation.
“Simply put, we’re here because of the short-sighted decisions of my predecessor,” he told the board in August. “Premiums were frozen for years. And members were made to believe it could be that way forever. But the plan was actually spending more than it took in each and every year.”
Briner agreed with Friedman on the December call that, although they have made very good progress in digging out of the hole that the SHP was in, more work needs to be done.
North carolina investment authority board
Another change that the treasurer implemented was to replace the state’s sole fiduciary model for its pension fund with a five-member North Carolina Investment Authority Board.
Briner, who heads the board, campaigned on the change last year, saying he believes small groups make better investment decisions than individuals. He also believes the sole fiduciary model has the potential for corruption, as only one person can make decisions without a set of checks and balances.
Democrat Gov. Josh Stein signed House Bill 506, the 2025 State Investment Modernization Act, into law in June, making the switch possible.
The board will assume fiduciary responsibility of the $139 billion state pension plan on Jan. 1.
Openai pilot program successful
A 12-week pilot program between Briner’s office and OpenAI was also successful.
He first announced the agreement in March.
Unclaimed Property and State and Local Government were the two divisions within the department that used OpenAI.
Briner said in August that the program had very good results.
“What we’ve learned first and perhaps most unsurprisingly is that this technology saves a material amount of time,” he said. “We estimate, thanks to our friends at North Carolina Central University (NCCU), which conducted the evaluation, that it improved the productivity of our employees by about 10% in the early phases of the trial. That last piece is important because the second thing we learned is that it kept improving, and it would have kept improving had the trial not ended. So we did not get to maximum productivity in the 12 weeks which we did this. And then third, we were able to orient our people towards more complex and human-centered interactions, which are inherently more productive and satisfying.”
Briner said on the December reporter’s call that his office currently has a material partnership with Microsoft’s Copilot, and other divisions are also looking at other AI solutions unique to their individual purposes.
“I think the productivity gains and managing the human element are the two big takeaways that we took from the OpenAI trial,” he told reporters.
what’s ahead for 2026
Briner said there are a lot of things that his office intends to accomplish in 2026 across every division, which will be similar to what they have already done.
“Better stewardship of our resources across everything we do,” he said. “Adoption of technology into each of our divisions is a process that we’ve only just begun. We run, in many cases, software that is 20 years old or older, and all of it needs to be modernized.”
The treasurer said their business processes need to be updated in many cases, and although people may not notice the changes as headlines, they will be reflected in results that are material over time. across every one of their divisions, which in turn will result in quicker responses to members and enable them to evaluate audits more efficiently.
“Whether that’s implementation of ID.me in the retirement system so that we can get people into their accounts much more easily, quickly, and without overtaxing the call center,” Briner stated. “You’ll see this throughout everything that we do, so given that we have seven divisions, I won’t go through all of them, but to say that a data dependency and a commitment to try new approaches to old problems to get better results will prevail in 2026, just as it has in 2025.”