Episodes

  • Pivot Finance AI Briefing — May 9, 2026

    Pivot Finance AI Briefing — May 9, 2026
    May 13 2026
    Hosts: Marcus Bell & Nora Chen In this episode: • Today we're covering the IMF's new systemic risk warning on AI cyberattacks, Rocket Companies' AI-driven earnings beat, and a breakthrough in financia... • Starting with the big one—the IMF just elevated AI-powered cyberattacks to systemic risk status, specifically calling out frontier models like Claude ... • Yeah, and what's striking is they're not talking about traditional hacks anymore. The IMF's concern is that these models could autonomously exploit op... • The specifics are chilling—they're describing scenarios where an AI could trigger coordinated withdrawals across multiple institutions by exploiting a... • What worries me is the timeline. If you're a CFO or risk officer, you're probably still building defenses against last year's threats while these agen... Subscribe to the newsletter at pivotnews.ai for the full written briefing.
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    5 mins
  • Pivot Finance AI Briefing — May 10, 2026

    Pivot Finance AI Briefing — May 10, 2026
    May 13 2026
    Hosts: Marcus Bell & Nora Chen In this episode: • Welcome to Pivot Finance for Sunday, May 10th, 2026. I'm Marcus Bell. • And I'm Nora Chen. This morning: Block leans hard into AI-driven lending, Rocket posts its best quarter in four years, and a new research framework ta... • Let's start with Block. Their Q1 was the first earnings print after the restructuring Jack Dorsey announced earlier this year, and the message to oper... • What stood out was the framing. Dorsey is explicitly tying the reorg to faster model deployment — underwriting, fraud, collections — across both consu... • For finance leaders, that's the headline. Embedded lending is no longer an experiment at Block — it's the growth story. The AI piece isn't generative ... Subscribe to the newsletter at pivotnews.ai for the full written briefing.
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    6 mins
  • Pivot Finance AI Briefing — May 13, 2026

    Pivot Finance AI Briefing — May 13, 2026
    May 13 2026
    Hosts: Marcus Bell & Nora Chen In this episode: • Welcome to Pivot Finance for Wednesday, May 13th, 2026. I'm Marcus Bell. • And I'm Nora Chen. This morning we're focused on a theme that's been quietly building for months: what happens when AI agents touch the money. We've g... • Let's start with the story lighting up finance Slack channels. A Reddit confession went viral over the weekend from someone claiming they gave an AI a... • And before anyone dismisses this as one anonymous post, it's not isolated. Similar patterns are showing up in audit committee discussions. Agentic pro... • That distinction matters because your audit trail collapses the moment an agent acts under a human identity. SOX-relevant entities should be especiall... Subscribe to the newsletter at pivotnews.ai for the full written briefing.
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    6 mins
  • Pivot Finance AI Briefing — May 8, 2026

    Pivot Finance AI Briefing — May 8, 2026
    May 13 2026
    Hosts: Marcus Bell & Nora Chen In this episode: • Today we're breaking down Block's radical AI restructuring that's turning Cash App into a lending machine, Digits pushing AI directly into accrual acc... • Alright, let's start with Block's Q1 earnings call yesterday. Jack Dorsey just unveiled the most aggressive AI transformation I've seen from a fintech... • Yeah, and this isn't just adding some chatbots. They restructured the entire company in Q4 to support this. Cash App's loan originations jumped 340% q... • The really clever part is how they're using Square's merchant data. The AI cross-references Cash App user spending patterns with Square merchant trans... • Which explains why they're projecting $8 billion in loan volume by year-end. But here's what finance teams need to watch—they're launching an embedded... Subscribe to the newsletter at pivotnews.ai for the full written briefing.
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    5 mins
  • Pivot Finance AI Briefing — May 12, 2026

    Pivot Finance AI Briefing — May 12, 2026
    May 13 2026
    Hosts: Marcus Bell & Nora Chen In this episode: • Today we're diving into the corporate card disaster that's got Reddit buzzing, AI's bottom-up insurgency in finance departments, and a new framework c... • Marcus, let's start with this Reddit confession that's been making rounds. Someone gave their AI agent unrestricted access to a corporate card, and th... • Yeah, this is wild. The poster describes handing their AI assistant a corporate card with no spending limits, no category restrictions, nothing. Withi... • What really struck me is how this exposes a massive blind spot. We're so focused on AI's potential for automation that we're not thinking about basic ... • Exactly. And here's what's terrifying - this person couldn't even figure out what half the charges were for. The AI was making purchases based on its ... Subscribe to the newsletter at pivotnews.ai for the full written briefing.
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    6 mins
  • Pivot Finance AI Briefing — May 11, 2026

    Pivot Finance AI Briefing — May 11, 2026
    May 11 2026
    Hosts: Marcus Bell & Nora Chen In this episode: • Welcome to Pivot Finance for Monday, May 11th, 2026. I'm Marcus Bell. • And I'm Nora Chen. If you run a close, a forecast, or a payables shop, today's stories hit your Q3 budget directly. Let's get into it. • Top of the show: Workday rolled out its 'Autonomous Close' module to general availability this morning, three months ahead of schedule. Pricing lands ... • The two-day claim deserves scrutiny. Reporting indicates the AI handles roughly 78% of intercompany eliminations and accrual journals autonomously, bu... • Right, and Workday is explicit that the agent operates inside SOX boundaries — every journal carries an immutable audit trail with model version, prom... Subscribe to the newsletter at pivotnews.ai for the full written briefing.
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    8 mins
  • Pivot Finance AI Briefing — May 7, 2026

    Pivot Finance AI Briefing — May 7, 2026
    May 7 2026
    Hosts: Marcus Bell & Nora Chen In this episode: • Good morning, this is Pivot Finance for Thursday, May 7, 2026. I'm Marcus Bell. • And I'm Nora Chen. Three stories today that touch your treasury stack, your reporting calendar, and your ERP roadmap. Let's start in London. • The UK Financial Conduct Authority has opened a formal investigation into PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard over how PayPal's digital wallet is funded and ... • For finance operators, the immediate question is interchange and wallet economics. If the FCA finds the three coordinated on funding sources or fees i... • UK e-commerce volumes are not trivial. For controllers running multi-currency receivables, PayPal often sits as a meaningful share of consumer-facing ... Subscribe to the newsletter at pivotnews.ai for the full written briefing.
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    7 mins