Municipal or “muni” bonds help fund infrastructure that citizens use every day: roads, schools, libraries, parks, sewer systems, and the like. However, since the minimum cost to purchase a muni bond is around $5,000, the typical taxpayer isn’t likely to invest in them. Instead, institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals are often the primary purchasers of muni bonds—and the ones who benefit from these bonds’ often tax-free status.

Officials in Quincy, Mass., a city of around 110,000 people just outside Boston, wanted to change that. By using blockchain technology, they’re working to make muni bonds more accessible to less-affluent taxpayers—and, by doing so, keep more of the money these bonds generate in the community.

Quincy announced its first blockchain bond this April. Though the bonds aren’t “at the stage yet where John Q. Public can engage,” Quincy CFO Eric Mason told CFO Brew, he sees that happening in the future. He envisions a day when the city will build a new school funded by a blockchain bond.

“Somebody could buy a bond for that new school, drive their kid to that school, drop them off, and then look and see that tax-free payment in their 401(k). That’s a goal that government should pursue,” he said.

For more on how Quincy is issuing debt on the blockchain, click here.—CV

Today’s finance leaders are faced with some big expectations. They’re on the hook to enable everything—savings, speed, growth.

It’s a lot. And it requires a winning combo of financial discipline and strategic spending to make it happen. Fortunately, Brex is here to help finance leaders do it all.

Brex helps finance leaders make the most of every dollar by allowing them to:

• Control spend before it happens with proactive limits and controls that work down to the category, merchant, and transaction level.
• Track spending vs. budgets in real time.
• Automate financial busywork.
• Maximize spending power with higher credit limits and better rewards.

Make every dollar count.

To make it to the C-suite, it helps to be driven and strive for excellence. But when leaders feel they must keep up a perfect façade and not let on that they’re struggling, their mental health can suffer. Sunil Deshmukh, global chair-elect and global board member of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), has seen this happen to many leaders he works with as an executive coach.

Deshmukh spoke with CFO Brew about executive loneliness at the IMA 24 Americas Accounting and Finance Conference in San Antonio, Texas. Below are his thoughts on the causes of such loneliness and what CFOs and other leaders can do about it.

The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What are some psychological or mental health challenges you see C-suite leaders struggling with?

The big one which I personally come across…is called executive loneliness. I personally feel this is a very neglected area in the C-suite across the world. Basically, C-suite executives are under immense pressure to excel. They have few avenues to vent out their emotions or frustrations…and this can cause them to be isolated. There’s fear of failure, there’s a fear of peer pressure, there’s a fear of frustration. And this can take them toward anxiety, depression, and other psychological dysfunctions.

Click here to continue reading about dealing with executive loneliness.—CV

CFOs understand that cybersecurity is an enterprise risk and not just something for those techies in IT to worry about.

New analysis from Marsh shows that cyberattacks aren’t going away. In fact, 2023 was a banner year for one type of attack, the broker found.

Marsh analyzed the 1,800+ cyber claims that its US and Canadian clients submitted last year. About a fifth (21%) of clients reported at least one cyber event during 2023, which fell in the range of 16% to 21% over the last five years.

But not everything was business as usual in 2023. According to the report, organizations saw a record number of cyber extortions (282), a 64% bump from 2022. Cyber extortion is a cyberattack that includes a blackmailing component, like when an attacker threatens to release sensitive information if the victim doesn’t pay a ransom demand.

While extortion events are up, more companies are clearly over it. Less than a quarter (23%) of victims succumbed to attackers’ ransom demands last year, continuing a downward trend since 2020, according to the report. In 2022, 30% of victims paid the ransom, but in 2021 a majority (63%) paid.

Keep reading about cyber extortion here.—AZ

Cash flowin’, ROI growin’. Versapay commissioned Forrester to do a study on the ROI of their cash application automation solution. Hold on to your hats, because it found customers achieved 138% ROI and improved efficiency by 69% when leveraging the cash application automation system. Read the full study.