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Courtney Vien

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Strategy

Alex Zank

Manufacturing activity was a mixed bag but generally down in various parts of the US this month, according to the latest round of Federal Reserve district surveys.

Mid-Atlantic manufacturing activity continued to soften this month, according to the Richmond Fed, as the Fed branch’s composite index for manufacturing slipped further into negative territory from August. September’s decline to -17 was harsher than the predicted -10, according to the Wall Street Journal. Manufacturers paid more in input prices this month, but prices they charged customers stayed relatively flat, the survey found.

Activity in the state of New York also declined, according to a New York Fed survey. The index dropped 21 points to -8.7, after showing gains in the final two months of summer. Manufacturers reported that new orders and shipments “fell sharply,” while inventories fell slightly and input prices remained elevated, though at a slower rate from August.

“Optimism about the outlook remained muted and employment levels are expected to be flat over the next six months,” Richard Deitz, economic research advisor at the New York Fed, said in the survey report.

The Chicago Fed, which oversees a chunk of the upper Midwest, reported a 20-point swing in its manufacturing activity index, down to -10 this month from +10 in August. The district’s survey of both manufacturing and nonmanufacturing activity showed slumps in activity, “suggesting that economic growth was below trend.” Manufacturers in the Philadelphia Fed’s territory—which covers eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware—fared much better this month. The district’s manufacturing survey revealed a 24-point increase in September to 23.2, its highest reading since January. About half of surveyed firms reported price increases, and just 2% reported decreases.

The Kansas City Fed found that manufacturing activity increased slightly in its section of the Great Plains, western Missouri, and the Rocky Mountains.

“Regional factory activity increased in September while price growth eased slightly,” Cortney Cowley, assistant vice president of the Kansas City Fed and its Oklahoma City branch executive, said in a release. “Production and employment ticked up this month, while new orders cooled.”

Survey respondents told the KC Fed that economic uncertainty is making it more difficult to plan.

“Uncertainty in end-use markets [is] making future forecasting more speculative than usual,” said one survey respondent.

Fed surveys paint a mostly lackluster picture of September manufacturing activity

 One manufacturer said customer uncertainty is “making future forecasting more speculative than usual.”

Drew Adamek

Current economic conditions feel a little like a roller coaster suspended at the very peak just before the first big drop, queasy stomach and all. The long climb up builds expectations for the coming plunge, but it isn’t here yet.

But 2026 might be the year that the economic coaster finally picks up steam as it heads downhill. While the US and global economies have proven more resilient than expected this year, Trump’s tariffs will 

 in 2026, especially for the US, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) interim Economic Outlook report.

The consequences of tariffs, and other Trump policies, are just starting to show up in the economy months after their implementation, in part because of how companies prepared for them, according to the OECD.

“The impacts of higher tariff rates are yet to be fully felt in the US economy. This reflects a combination of factors, with firms making use of inventories and ample profit margins to avoid or absorb the initial impact of higher tariffs, lags between the announcement and imposition of higher tariff rates, and the exemption of goods already in transit from higher tariff rates,” according to the OECD.

But that grace period may be ending soon. The OECD projects that US growth will “fall from 2.8% in 2024 to 1.8% in 2025 and 1.5% in 2026.” Higher tariffs, slowing immigration, and Trump’s slashing of the federal workforce are all contributing to the lower growth projections.

“Growth is expected to soften noticeably in the second half of this year, as front-loading activity unwinds and higher effective tariff rates on imports to the United States and China dampen investment and trade growth,” the OECD said.

The OECD sees other signs of weakness in the global economy that could cause slowdowns. Slumping labor markets, 

 are also contributing to lower growth predictions.

The OECD did note two possible upsides for economic growth: a potential easing of trade restrictions and faster advances in AI technology.

OECD predicts tariffs will dent American economy in 2026

Global economy more resilient than expected, but 2026 may be painful.

Interest rates can complicate capital strategy, so it’s no surprise that it’s a top of mind issue for finance leaders. A recent Deloitte 

 found that interest rates were a top external risk among CFOs. And while interest rates are finally 

, it’s been an otherwise tough environment.

It’s one thing being a finance executive of nearly any organization during periods of high interest rates. Leading the finance function of an online mortgage lender, where interest rates are a key driver of consumer demand, is like playing CFO on hardcore difficulty.

That’s the challenge facing Kevin Ryan, CFO of Better Home & Finance. The company, which operates the website Better.com, is playing in what Ryan described as a “challenging market environment” but also has its sights set on reaching EBITDA breakeven by Q3 of next year.

Ryan’s focus during this period has been to get Better leaner and meaner so it can work toward its goal even amid a drastically shrinking market.

The mortgage market ain’t what it used to be.

 According to Ryan, back in 2021, Better had $58 billion in mortgage volume and raked in $1 billion of revenue. Better recently reported approximately $44 million in Q2 revenue, much smaller than in its heyday, but a $12 million YoY improvement. But the mortgage market was much bigger four years ago, Ryan said.

Residential mortgage origination volume totaled roughly $4.1 trillion in 2021, according to Federal Housing Finance Agency data. Origination volume fell precipitously to $1.3 trillion in 2023. Origination volume during the first three quarters of last year, which was the latest data FHFA had available, totaled nearly $1.1 trillion.

“The industry in 2025 is half the size of what it was in 2021, and we, and all our competitors…are dealing with that,” Ryan said.

In order to grow its business, Better has had to carve off a larger piece of a smaller pie. In Q2, the company reported a 25% YoY increase in funded loan volume to $1.2 billion, and a $5 million YoY improvement in net losses. Its EBITDA loss grew by $4 million YoY in Q2, but improved by $13 million from Q1.

Ryan noted that other factors, such as housing availability and the number of people moving, also shape the mortgage market.

But he said, “probably the largest driver of mortgage demand is how much [it costs] to get a mortgage.” Ryan said that the market should grow again once rates come down. (Our interview took place before the Fed announced plans to cut rates.)

Cost discipline is the name of the game when on a shrinking playing field.

 Better has tackled the marketwide problem by cutting costs and investing in technology to improve its processes, Ryan said. It’s a strategy—controlling costs while prioritizing tech investments–that many other finance leaders are employing, per a June RGP 

Better’s technology investments have a few benefits, he said. They create a better user experience, put Better in a stronger position to take advantage of a market rebound, and reduce the cost to write a mortgage—so Better has more cash to use elsewhere.

“For each loan we make, it costs us less per loan as a result of the AI and tech investments we’ve made,” Ryan said. “That allows us to spend a little more money on marketing [and] pass a little bit better rate through to the customer, so that it makes the mortgage on the margin a little more attractive for the consumer.”

Ryan said that, at a basic level, creating a mortgage is not much different than making a can of soda. Being able to offer that can for $1.50 instead of $2 means the customers who would have bought one for $2 are happy, but those who would have otherwise passed on it may now get out their wallets.

“But that presupposes you can make money at [a] lower cost to the consumer,” Ryan said. “That requires us to really manage our expenses, invest in technology, automate more so that we can manufacture at a lower cost.”

As CFO, Ryan said he regularly looks at the cost of writing a loan, identifies where the inputs are most expensive, and figures out how to make those parts of the business more efficient. This may be through cutting down on vendor costs or identifying new near-term growth opportunities.

 question,” he said. “I have a fixed amount of capital, and how do I want to allocate it? Trying to develop a real capital allocation policy is important.”

What to do when trying to grow amid a shrinking market? 

Turn to the CFO. 

This is part two of a CFO Brew series exploring the biggest AI takeaways coming out of the recent Workiva Amplify 2025 conference. Read about the many AI use cases in accounting, internal audit, and risk management functions in 

It was something that thought leaders couldn’t say enough throughout Workiva’s Amplify conference: Good data is paramount for effective AI implementation.

“Bad data is AI’s kryptonite,” Alexander Davis, deputy CFO of Pie Insurance, said during a panel session. “If your organization is all-in on AI and you’re not all-in on data, you might have a problem one day. And I think a lot of folks in this room are used to sitting in meetings where data security is the topic, and I wish that collectively, we sat in rooms and worried about data quality at the same level.”

It seems many companies aren’t in a good place yet with their data. According to a recent Workiva 

, nearly two-thirds of practitioners indicated a lack of “high-quality data” for use with AI at their organizations. Practitioners who were confident in their companies’ ability to use AI were about twice as likely to have high-quality data and role-specific training compared to their less-confident counterparts.

Steve Soter, VP and industry principal at Workiva, said he was seeing those concerns about data, among other things like governance and controls, come out in conversations he was having with others at the Amplify conference.

“Yes, they’re optimistic about [AI]. Yes, they’re excited about it. But there are real challenges,” he told CFO Brew on day two of the conference.

Davis recommended companies “invest in fixing their source systems,” which can happen as they adopt AI tools—a time-consuming task on its own.

“Maybe what we do with the time we have now is get the data right, so that when it arrives, we’re ready to go,” Davis said.

 Good data is a cornerstone of financial disclosures in a brave new AI-powered world. It’s not just the organizations using AIs to draft their disclosures; auditors and regulators, too, are using the technology to review and scrutinize them, according to Workiva CEO Julie Iskow.

Organizations should expect AI will review their disclosures even before human eyes get a first glance, Iskow said in a speech. These AI models can look for patterns, data accuracy, anomalies, and more within seconds. Importantly, the models also do not pause mid-review for feedback or follow-up questions.

“If you want to control the narrative and avoid misinterpretation, your reporting and disclosures have to be intelligence-ready,” Iskow said. Translation: “Your narrative needs to have structured data; it needs to be consistent and traceable, interpretable, machine-readable, and filled with context,” she continued.

 Adil Asar, senior director of product and engineering at Salesforce, recently helped an organization realign Salesforce’s tech stack. The result was a centralized location for Salesforce’s data, rather than its being scattered across various corners of the network. One benefit of the digital transformation project was that Salesforce’s “controllership can access and manage data seamlessly and securely across its operations,” according to a Workiva news release.

Another consequence was that the centralized data will also help “enable our agentic [AI] expansion,” Asar told Amplify attendees. “Ultimately, for any of the agents, and especially as you move in the whole autonomous universe, we wanted data which would help to remove the decision-making, and we actually think you can get the right data in so that the agents can take actions on our behalf,” he said.

How exactly are organizations measuring whether their (often expensive) AI investments are paying off? CFO Brew will explore the challenges with AI ROI in part three.

Avoid AI ‘kryptonite’

Majority of practitioners say they lack high-quality data for AI training.

Avoid AI ‘kryptonite’—good data is vital to successful implementation

CFO Brew joined a crowd of corporate finance practitioners who recently descended on the Gaylord National convention center in Washington, DC, for Workiva’s 2025 Amplify conference.

Surprise, surprise: The prevailing topic this year was AI. Thought leaders and attendees waxed poetic on the technology’s potential to transform all facets of corporate finance. But existential talk is one thing. Practical use is another.

That was one of the prevailing questions during the three-day conference: How exactly are accounting, audit, and reporting teams 

? As it turned out, the use cases flowed as freely as the coffee.

 Amplify was like a Golden Corral of use cases—there was a little something for everyone. Here are some of the highlights.

The internal audit team at financial services firm StoneX uses AI tools to help write data queries and then check the results for accuracy and completeness, Jeanne Cline, StoneX’s chief audit executive, said during a panel session.

Consumer loan fintech Best Egg’s risk management team used AI to write first drafts in a series of eight policies, Chief Risk Officer Heather Holding said. “I was actually able to do them in a day,” she told session attendees. “Of course, obviously my team had to look at it and refine it and make sure that it was good for the organization.”

AI also helps Holding’s team sift through competitors’ SEC reports to identify emerging risk trends. This type of analysis can help organizations game-plan “what you can actually do to get ahead of the risk that your other partners are already seeing,” she said.

Alexander Davis, deputy CFO of Pie Insurance, told CFO Brew that he uses AI to easily tweak commentary based on the intended audience.

“If I’m writing the same slide for the finance team, leadership team, and the board, it’s the same numbers with three different levels of story,” Davis explained. AI makes it easier and quicker to tailor that information to different recipients, he said.

Pie’s finance team is also using AI to more quickly analyze new guidance or standards from regulators like FASB and NAIC.

“We’re using less of our time and less of the auditors’ time, because we have a pinpointed approach,” Davis said.

 By and large, organizations have gotten good at using AI for “mundane tasks,” but are thinking bigger for future implementations, Mike Callino, customer engagement platform Braze’s senior director of internal audit, told eventgoers. Audit professionals will, over the next 12 to 18 months, start identifying where they can deploy AI tools into regular workflows “for planning, field work, reporting, [and] remediation…to make that process so much more efficient and drive greater gains in the audit function.”

“I think there will be a big play on agentic solutions in each part of the process,” Callino said.

In the meantime, finance leaders want to show off the potential of AI through some bite-sized immediate improvements.

Junko Swain, chief accounting officer at Workiva, said she encourages her team to “start small” and get a “quick win, and a quick benefit from using AI in a secured environment.” This strategy, she explained, helps workers become comfortable with the technology before the bigger changes take hold within the organization.

“We are taking baby steps,” Swain told CFO Brew. “We talk about AI, but actual adoption of AI itself takes time, because it requires such huge change management.”

Similarly, StoneX is in the “individual production stage” of AI, where employees are getting comfortable with using the AI tools, according to Cline. The company’s next steps will be to embed AI more broadly into various departments and workflows, “making a whole process more efficient and effective than just the individual,” she said.

Experts cautioned that AI is only as good as the data it’s being fed. The next installment in CFO Brew’s chronicling of all the hot AI topics at Amplify will dive deeply into that challenge, and relay the best practices as told by experts.

Photo collage of an AI icon in between two hands pointing at each other contained within abstract shapes.

AI in finance offers quick wins and big promises

Finance leaders said their companies are taking baby steps now, but thinking big for the long run.

Let’s do our own poll. How confident are 

 about the state of the US economy? Well, there ya go. We had a feeling.

Consumer sentiment dropped in September, while long-term inflation expectations rose, according to a preliminary monthly reading from the University of Michigan.

The confidence index dipped to 55.4, from 58.2 in August. That was lower than the 58.1 

. Meanwhile, consumer expectations about long-term inflation climbed to 3.9%, up from August’s 3.5% reading. In the year ahead, consumers expect prices to climb by 4.8%, unchanged from last month.

“Consumers continue to note multiple vulnerabilities in the economy, with rising risks to business conditions, labor markets, and inflation,” Joanne Hsu, the director of the university’s consumer surveys, said in a statement. “Likewise, consumers perceive risks to their pocketbooks as well.”

That isn’t too much of a surprise. In case you haven’t been following along: The consumer sentiment report arrived after a spate of disappointing data for the US economy.

The day before, the Bureau of Labor Statistics 

 consumer prices rose 0.4% in August, with food at home prices rising particularly high.

, August’s jobs report showed the US added just 22,000 jobs for the month. Earlier 

, the BLS revised its prior data, revealing the US added far fewer jobs than previously thought in 2024 and 2025.

So, we’ll ask again: How confident are 

Consumer sentiment drops in September 

The reading comes after a spate of disappointing news about the US economy. 

Americans are feeling anxious about their ability to find new jobs. (And really, 

 shows that US consumers felt less confidence about their ability to find a job than at any point in the past 12 years. The survey, which polls around 1,300 heads of households on a monthly basis, found that respondents gave themselves only a 44.9% chance, on average, of landing a new job within three months should they lose one.

That’s the lowest percentage since the Consumer Expectations Survey started asking about job searches in June 2013. The drop, the New York Fed wrote in a press release, “was broad-based across age, education, and income groups,” but was largest among respondents with a high-school education or less.

Consumers also believed gas and food prices are on the rise this year. In December 2024, they predicted that gas prices would increase by 2% in the next 12 months. In both July and August of this year, they estimated gas prices would jump by 3.9%. Respondents estimated food price inflation of 4% in December 2024. For the past four months, they’ve forecast it at 5.5%.

Most of the other economic indicators the survey measured were little changed from last month. Consumers’ expectations of losing a job in the next 12 months stood at 14.5%, on average, slightly higher than the average of 14% the survey observed over the past 12 months. They estimated their chances of leaving their jobs voluntarily in the next 12 months at 18.9%, again about in line with what the survey’s been seeing over the past 12 months.

Respondents’ sentiments about overall inflation (3.2% over the next 12 months), household spending (5% over the next year) and household income growth (2.9%) stayed steady over the past month and were similar to survey findings over the past 12 months.

Now Hiring sign with piece of tape over "now" with "not" written on it.