American Thought Leaders - He Ran the World’s Biggest Payment Processor; Now He’s Taking on Social Security | Frank Bisignano

Episode Date: March 28, 2026

In this episode, I’m sitting down with Frank Bisignano, who oversees not one, but two of America’s most consequential institutions: the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).Before stepping into government, he built a career at the very top of finance as the youngest senior vice president in American Express history at just 25, co-COO of JPMorgan Chase, and CEO of the fintech company Fiserv.Now, he’s taking on a different kind of challenge: bringing, in his words, “accuracy” to massive federal agencies that impact every American.He’s cleaning up records—including moving records of 12.4 million people aged 120 and over into the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File—and digitizing records to streamline systems.“There wasn’t really a routine to reconcile data. ... It wasn’t that people who weren’t alive any longer were getting paid social security. It was that there was a live social security number which could be used throughout the whole system,” Bisignano said.How is he transforming these agencies? What new benefits are there in this year’s tax season?How are the newly rolled out “Trump accounts” doing? And will Social Security be able to resolve insolvency challenges in the decades ahead?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.A

Because it wasn't that people who weren't alive any longer were getting paid Social Security. It was that there was a live Social Security number which could be used throughout the whole system. That's where you're going to have fraud ways and abuse. Today I sit down with Frank Besignano, who oversees not one but two of America's most consequential institutions, the Social Security Administration, SSA, and the Internal Revenue Service, IRS. Before stepping into government, he built a career at the very top of finance, CEO of Ficer, co-C-C-O of JPMorgan Chase, and the youngest senior vice president in American Express history at just 25.

Now he's taking on a different kind of challenge, bringing, in his words, accuracy to massive federal agencies that impact every American. We have inaccurate information on a mission critical file, and we've cleaned that up. What does it take to streamline systems this complex? And can Social Security really survive the decades ahead? This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Kellick. Commissioner and CEO, Frank Bisignano, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Thanks for having me. I'm honored to be here. So you take care of two agencies which deal with an astonishing amount of cash. I see here the Social Security Administration outlays are about $1.7 trillion. dollars and the IRS Internal Revenue Service inflows of $5.6 trillion. That is an unfathomable amount of money that you are responsible for. A big question that people have, right, is we keep hearing about waste, fraud, and abuse, right? And this is something that's been a key issue for this administration. So, you know, across these two agencies, what were the things that you found that

perhaps were the most shocking or unbelievable? And what corrections have you been implementing? Well, you know, fraud, waste, and abuse happens in all shapes and sizes and all dimensions. And those are some staggering numbers, but as I had said in my confirmation hearing, I was running a company doing, you know, $2.5 trillion of payments a day. So I've been fortunate and blessed in the opportunities I've had and the people I've worked for and now especially they're a great honor to work for President Trump. But, you know, one very simple thing was that Social Security, we had a website that you could have a digital account on, but it was down, you know, almost 20% of the time by design, 29. hours a week. And so you might not think that as fraud, waste, and abuse, but we now have more than

100 million digital users because in a couple weeks, really, you know, with testing and everything, we changed that and it was up, you know, every hour of a day. We also ran a concept that said, We were going to have a pristine control environment. It's always important. We saved tens of billions of dollars on what we saw as control-related issues. We treat everything in a manner that we want to get the best possible outcome. So I think when you think about fraud, waste, and abuse, getting payments right is the most important thing. being able to, given the amount of money that we're flowing,

and that's what we've had a maniacal focus on while delivering customer service at a level that they've never seen before. Just very briefly, what do you mean by design it was down? You know, they were running batch cycles on weekends and at night, and, you know, probably when at first was built, The conclusion was, okay, well, we'll have the data up. We can't have the data up when we're running the batch cycle. But, you know, modern day technology allows you to mirror data

and then keep it up there and do something called store and forward. So if people were transacting with us, we'd store it. And when the batch cycle ended running, we'd pass it on. And, you know, it didn't sound really bad unless you were in Hawaii or California. you know, if the system went down at, you know, 12, lots of people want to use a system, you know, on weekends, and it wasn't always up. So it was by design, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea.

It might have been a convenient idea, and we had some great engineers that changed it all in less than two weeks. So, you know, one of the things I have here is that there were 12.4, four million individuals on Social Security aged 120 or over. So what was happening? I've read about this, what was happening with these people? Were they getting paid somehow? No, you know, we embarked on a project

that we're at the kind of completion of what I called was reconciling the data. So there wasn't really a routine to reconcile data. And over time it evolved. And I thought, you know, something, call it the Social Security database, we now have built routines that cause us to regularly ensure that those on it or should be on it. And what I said was, which I 100% believe, is it wasn't that people who people who more and alive any longer were getting paid Social Security. It was that there was a live Social Security number

which could be used throughout the whole system. So, you know, that's where you're going to have fraud waste and abuse. You know, I said this too early on when asked about it. You know, of course, what was being said was We have inaccurate information on a mission critical file. And we've cleaned that up, and we've cleaned it up way beyond that, way beyond that. And I'm pretty proud of the effort. I created two positions ahead of risk management and ahead of cyber and resiliency

or security and resiliency that did not exist reporting it to me because to control environments so darn important, to deliver a great client experience. Hey, everyone. I'm going to be trying to get some more sponsors for American thought leaders. And the reason is I want to try to get it on more of the non-paywall platforms where we'll use the sponsors to kind of support the show. And one of the sponsors that I really appreciate is American Hartford Gold.

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We've had a great experience working with them. They're better business bureau certified. And frankly, really easy to work with. Okay. So you can call them at 8.5. 55862-3377. You can text American to 655332 or as always click the link in the description below. So there's something called SSI and I think there's just a lot of confusion about even what this is exactly and why it's important. Can you lay that out?

Well, you know, Social Security is in a hundred percent of every American's retirement plan, you know, right? So if you think about it that way. And so also, you know, it protects the most vulnerable. We have a disability system. We have fundamentally a thousand judges that adjudicate hundreds of thousands cases to ensure people who should get disability to do. And then, you know, we have supplemental insurance for those who can't really manage through the environment that they operate in, the most vulnerable people. And what was interesting is when I came into the job, it wasn't really on my mind.

And what I heard from field offices is how much labor goes into SSI because you're validating monthly that these people qualify for this supplemental payment. And what I decided to do was put somebody in charge of it, right? Have an executive of reports to me, have responsibility for SSI as opposed to have it completely diffused and subordinated to no responsibility but a process. throughout the whole organization. And so we're streamlining it. We're using data feeds

to help the decision-making criteria. And it's not serving the largest swath of Americans, but it's serving almost vulnerable and in a manner that actually they get full attention of leadership and technology and all the things, the other processes. It's the smallest part of Social Security, administrations payments, but it's equally as important.

You've just elevated these benefits, basically. That's why the focus on this, and before they were at the bottom of the barrel. No longer subordinated to a process, but think of it like, I view it like we have business lines. We have a disability business line. We have a retirement business line, and we have a supplemental income business line. And, you know, that deserves as much attention and requires more work at the end of it. Because once people are in retirement, you know, those are not the people calling us in the ask their help. They get their direct deposits, you know, 99% of them, you know, those who get checks, get them in the mail.

That's obviously disappeared over time. but people on supplemental insurance are continually validating their responsibility to let us know why they need to stay on it. So building a separate leadership and a structure will actually save us a lot of money. It's going to save us a lot of money, but the whole program is about how we do a better job for the American public, but do it in an efficient modern-day methodology. And when it comes to Social Security, how big an issue is it that people who, who are illegally in the United States have access to that system and are collecting money they shouldn't be.

Well, I think, you know, back to that story about reconciling the file, that's one of the main components of it, ensuring the people are on file or citizens, valid citizens that we have proof of. And that's been the journey we've been on since we came here to have accurate books and records. So we like to believe that we've made a large dent in it. I think you'll hear shortly from us the culmination of that effort.

Any hints now? Tremendous progress. And, you know, the reason why, you know, we're able to drive payment accuracy over time up because we're only paying to those who should get paid. You know, there was a lot of dialogue about, the fact that we took people off the system who we figured out weren't still alive. So we want to be exactly accurate in everything we do because it has a financial implication. It has an identity implication, right?

But I'd give the risk team tremendous, tremendous grades for what they've done and calling through all this data and making it a priority and something that's never been done before. I want to talk a little bit about your background because, I mean, you have a pretty unique background to step into this kind of role. And of course, you manage, as you mentioned, you managed a massive payment processor and dealt with, you know, again, you sort of a, to most of us, unfathomable amounts of money on a daily basis. Just tell me a little bit about your background and how you ended up here. I always went to an operational bent very early on. Somebody said to me when I was 20, you need to learn how to code, and that was a long time ago.

So I was a technologist and operator. I had fabulous bosses, as I have today, which is, you know, the pinnacle of my life, having the opportunity to work for President Trump. But, you know, I worked with Henry Kravitz, who ran KKR, and turned around their largest investment. I worked with one of the greatest CEOs and financial services and maybe in the country for over 20 years, Jamie Diamond. Before that, I worked for Jamie and Sandy Weil,

who was one of the forefathers of buying companies and integrating them. So I straddled all the technology and operations and infrastructure. You know, I had the responsibility as the chief administrative officer on 9-11 for Citigroup and had 16,000 people in Longham, Manhattan, and several World Trade Center was one of our buildings. And I saw everything imaginable and never left, but we had a plan. end. So I spent a lot of time on large-scale operations and then running technical businesses like the Global Transaction Bank at Citigroup, multiple times running mortgage businesses, including post-crisis and having the opportunity to turn around the housing market with the housing secretary

and another chief negotiator for the banks. But really focused, spend a lot of time on had to make things more efficient, had to ensure books and records are straight, and had to deliver for the American consumer. You know, and so in the last company that I was CEO, and I love saying we served every American. I was old. I have that opportunity again here. So, I mean, you're bringing a very kind of corporate vision, right, to the, to, would

you say that's accurate? Yeah, I would say I'm bringing. a operational focus to it that I might have honed in all my years and being at the top of the largest financial institutions of the world. It's absolutely fascinating to see, for example, one of the big focuses you seem to have is digitization, and that's going to streamline a lot of the work that's happening. So I want to talk about that, but I also want to talk about it in the context where There's a lot of people that are very skeptical of digitization because it makes some of this PII, right, personally identifiable information,

may be more easily accessible, more easily to be abused by, there's a lot of less trust in these big institutions, some of these corporate institutions. So how do you square that? On the one side, of course, you can see the value of digitization, right? On the other hand, there's this potential, I don't know, increase in ability to use. personal information if that were to be abused how do you deal with that first of all i've always run on a platform of we're going to serve clients where they want to be served right in this case we have 1200 plus field offices uh that are there they're pillars of many communities and if people want to come in and do face-to-face uh business we're available uh i love saying we

We haven't shut a field office, right? That doesn't mean we haven't done way more transactions online or on the phone. But I think Omni Channel presence matters a lot. In this case, Omni Channel is you have the ability to call, do you have the ability to walk in, and you have the ability, you know, seven days a week, 24 hours a day to go online and look for the information you need or do 38 different transaction types.

So I think that's the best you could do for people, right? We're going to meet you where you want to go, where you're most comfortable. We all know that everybody is transacting digitally at all different ages, and we're in the midst of rolling out a mobile app, taking all that information and allowing you to do it on your phone and to be able to look up at my Social Security account and understand exactly where you are in your life cycle if you're sitting on a plane and wanted to look at your mobile app.

There's a reason we have more than 100 million digital users. They're all voluntary. We didn't ask one of them to... We might have asked them, but we believe that people should be served them and they want to be served. Obviously, we're maniacally focused on... cyber. You know, I've elevated two positions that report to me. One is the head of risk management,

and that's really been the group that's overseed that cleanup of the database and driven down the fraud numbers by billions, and then the head of security and resiliency, which includes cyber. These are not functions that historically would have ever been even known reporting close to the commissioner. But I think they're mandatory functions that deserve a seat at the table to have a voice every week in our governance structures on how to run the place, right? I think this applies. This is just kind of maybe a bit of a philosophical question, but it has a very profound operational. answer. Like, you know, in a role such as yours, both on the side of the IRS and the Social Security SSA, on the one hand, you know, you're responsible to the people, obviously, right? This is the form of government we have. On the other hand, you're responsible to, you know, the institutions, right? And the institutions, those, the, the goals are not necessarily always the same. And we've seen kind of increased, for example, increased institutions. interest in government institutions and getting a lot of personal information and that so these

systems can be abused. I'm just very curious how you think about that. Like how do we how do we deal with that with that tension if you will? Because we're heading right into a world, right, aggressively where all information is there out you know kind of in the in the cloud so to speak, right? Yeah. Well I think first of all I think of it a really pragmatic way. I am here to serve the American people. That means protect their information also. And I am here to serve the federal government led by President Trump to do the best imaginable job to drive out fraud, waste, and abuse, which really, in my case, means serving the client better and more accurately. I've always believed that you can drive efficiency and get higher client service together.

You know, fundamentally when, you know, two years ago it took 40 minutes to answer the phone, and now it takes eight. Well, that's going to be way more productive and way more client service oriented. And by the way, that's because we're using more technology. I love saying technology is a great enabler, right? I've done it my whole career. How do we make it easy for the American public to deal with us, the federal government, and how do we make it better actually for our employees?

For our employees, the more technology we bring, the more their job is enriched. And then lastly, you know, it's job one for everybody to protect the information. job one right that's job one that's and you know you sound like you're doing better than my telecom company to be perfectly honest here well i always i always i always i always i say all the time i won't bring up names but i say like i know you know because i get served by entities my wife my family gets served by entities outperformance is better than public entities public companies right? It really is.

I'm really darn proud of people. And I think at the same point, I'll tell you something about, as I said, people, you know, in the organization, the 24th and the 26th of December where it was an executive order that they were holidays and that the workforce could stay home.

And, you know, in these organizations, historically, that's what they did. And I thought about the people and they had gone through this horrible, horrible, induced shutdown. And, you know, we were navigating hardships all the time for the people. I mean, we have a horrible shutdown at DHS right now. And so I recognized, I'm the son of a 44-year federal. employee. So I understand, you know, when I came on the job, I told everybody had a bias towards them. Of course, they thought, oh, my God, what's he mean? I said, I have a bias,

the hardest working person I ever knew. My dad, my role model, who was an orphan himself, worked 44 years for treasury and customs enforcement. And so anyhow, I knew dad liked overtime. and so I asked people, we had them, I said, I like to open up all the field offices, I like to open up the phone center, I want to serve the American public, 66% of our people volunteered to come in. So this went, in SSA we went from the largest, in large agencies, the lowest morale to people who want to come in. serve the American public on days they could have stayed at home. And, you know, that also means they had no tax on that overtime. O triple B, right? And that is affecting employers positively and people positively.

You know, I hear from employers that, you know, now my people want to work overtime when they ever did because, you know, at some point they were saying, wow, overtime, you know, I get taxed on it. you know, I'm making a trade. So I think that was effective also for those who understood when they all volunteered to come in. Let's talk about Trump accounts. I know this is something we, when we were talking offline, I know this is something very important to you. And so just explain to me what they are and where we're at.

Oh, well, we're about to pierce a million babies born that are going to get the $1,000. So start there in the next four years, you know, child born. You fill out in my favorite form of 45, 47, and you can register your child, get $1,000, put in a Trump account for them. But you can register, you know, anyone up until 18. And, you know, you begin, you know, whether a, whether a, you know, whether a It's Michael Dell doing it, or there's lots of people who are putting money into the system, parents using it as a savings vehicle for their child up till 18.

It's a powerful, powerful instrument. We have over 3 million Trump accounts opened. Obviously, I said a million babies, but we have over 3 million because people are opening up for their children. And I think it's fabulous. I think, you know, it's another form of an IRA, just a different concept. Right. And I mean, basically, for any child under 18,

this can be opened up. So it sounds like there's a lot more opportunity here to be taking advantage of. Yeah, I think people are becoming educated to the topic. We probably will continue to educate them. I think you'll see financial planners educating them. I think you're going to see tax preparers educating them, and I think it's going to be explosive. Now, on the IRS side, I was looking at some of the numbers.

I saw that the refund numbers are up, which is I know it's something you're going to want to talk about, right? Well, I think, yes, the refund numbers are up and they're up in a double-digit percentage. Recognizing that's one part of the tail of the tape. That's happening because of greater benefits of O triple B. Now remember, with those greater benefits, people are going to have less withholding in 26. So not only is their refund higher, but they're also getting more cash in their pocket in 26 through what the tax changes that were implemented. And then there was a whole bunch of things that were going to expire. you know, small business benefits that, you know, in the president's great legislature,

he implemented permanency with obviously Congress and Senate. So when you take all that, and then you say the last item is, well, there's some people who aren't getting refunds because they had other items, capital gains, other items, and getting a full tax benefit. So the refund is one part of the story. Then there's the permanency for things that people had that they were going to lose. There's the Trump account. And then there's withholding.

So that's why it's so darn powerful. I say, I think you said the average tax benefit is up over $780. That's the number that I see. Yeah, it's probably up a hair more right now. But yeah, and, you know, if you think about that for a household, you know, that's a really, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's a real money. I mean, that's a, you know, a real benefit. Um, but like I said, all of those, you know, here's a good way to think about it, too. Thank you for the opportunity. 45% of Americans who have filed, and we're way past the 50% mark right now. So we're deep in, as I said to the staff this morning,

we're deep into the season. We're in the fourth quarter of this game, right? And if you think about it in a sports term. And, you know, I don't think any of us thought the number would be 45% of those who've all, already sent their returns and have a Schedule 1A. And that means that's the percent of Americans that are getting some benefit that other than the fact that we kept permanent what was going to go away, but on the Schedule 1A,

that's a stunning number. How does that, how is that different from before? Well, that would be zero. There was zero, right? No tax on tip? No tax on overtime zero. The deduction for seniors, which will, you know, I think overtime is the largest subscribed. Seniors will probably get the largest benefit.

And then obviously no tax on car loans. So none of that existed before. So would you say that as your kind of, would you tout that as your biggest success this far? Well, I think it's, you know, I'm just here to get the work done. You know, this is really the president leading this, and my job was executed, but I will give the team tremendous success in that we did all the technology changes, put everything in and a serve in the American public better than before. And by the way, guess what they are doing, using our online capabilities, digital first, right?

the ability and not, we're getting less phone calls this year than last year, because people have the online capabilities that we built. In the past, there's been examples of the IRS being kind of weaponized as a kind of a tool. And I'm wondering, you know, this is something that, you know, I think existed at some level at least when you came into your role. How are we dealing with that? Is that, is there? Well, you know, it goes back to, you know, at the end of day, our job,

is to uphold the law, right? You know, we're a multi-dimensional organization. We serve the American public. We're financial services, but we have to make sure everybody is doing what they're supposed to be doing. And, you know, I think it's another great opportunity that you'll see happen over the next two years

of us supplying technology. to leave out people to decision-making, not just work. Right? So when you find out, and many times, you know, we can help people better do their taxes better. And I also believe that, you know, the tax preparers have a responsibility here, and I've had very good receptivity from them

in terms of us getting together and talking about how they could do a better job so that taxpayers have all the right information and can be 100% compliant. Remember, we have a usually compliant system here. We have a hugely compliant system. And some people don't always just get it right, and that's a simple error. And then sometimes it's more complicated situation. And that's a very, very small, small minority. It's not the majority.

OK. Well, just so what I was thinking about specifically, like there were examples. And I think this happened at some scale where there was, you know, kind of favoritism for certain types of nonprofit entities or lack of favoritism for others. And so it was kind of a, there's this human element in it, right?

Well, that's where I really believe technology can cover a lot of ground and present the cases appropriately, and then you're going to get solid decision-making, and you'll be able to actually have much better information. I guess it's a paper, well, I guess technically it's not a paper trail, but it would be you could track it better. Is this the idea? Everything.

Yeah, I mean, like, look at the amount of things we could do. You know, everybody gets concerned when you use the word AI, except I don't. It's technology. The cloud's technology. AI is technology. Years ago, local area networks is technology. Before that, mainframes.

I was just talking about technology as a great enabler, and it'll make our workforce better. It'll help people be more compliant. It'll help tax preparers be more compliant for their people, which they really want to be, and to get a better outcome and a higher compliance rate. So back to the SSA for a moment, one of the things that I see keep coming up, and I just like to understand for the record, the reality of it, is this, you know, that Social Security is going to become insolvent in a not too distant to future. At least that's the narrative, right? And I've seen all sorts of different explanations as to, yes, it's true. No, it's not true. It's partially true. Can you kind of set the record straight for me? What is the situation? Well, I mean, the last report by the actuary said, you know, in, you know, call it seven years.

If nothing is done, people get paid out at 83%, not 100%. So that's the first thing because some people think it's zero when you say solvency. Now, the practical issue is the president has been very, very clear. He's going to protect and preserve, and he's going to protect, preserve, and strengthen. Right. And so there is no vision of zero occurring here. But the first thing that had to occur, in my opinion, as the Commissioner of Social Security, get the books on records right, eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse,

serve the American public in a manner they're being served, which gets them to feel we have a modern-day system. And then obviously this all gets solved, you know, by Congress, right? And so I have high confidence. I had high confidence coming into the job. I always believed the job was root out fraud, waste, and abuse. found billions of dollars from that, deliver a great product for the American public. It's going on right now. It will continue to go on and give out lawmakers what they need to make us good, solid decision.

And just so I get it like in a kind of in a nutshell here, you mentioned that you were able to find billions of dollars in that waste fraud. Can you just kind of summarize for me where that came from? Well, it's fundamentally on proper payments, you know. We'll sit around the table on Monday and go through a series of risk factors, and we'll always be on how we drive improper payments higher, right? I made the point when people would say it's, you know, it's 99% accurate. You know, I go, well, it's supposed to be 99.999,999. That's the place I came from.

And that's, and billions come out of that? Yes, sir. That's astonishing. Well, it's hard to, I mean, you would understand that, given your background, right? Yeah. I'm just fortunate to be here, and I just want to serve the president's administration and do the best job I can. I guess I would understand. But the bottom line is you're saying through efficiency, you've found this.

Well, that's accuracy. Oh, okay. Okay. Right. When you have a file that has all types of people, on it that maybe shouldn't be on it as the president had identified, right? I mean, that's in the tip of the iceberg thought, right? So we don't go around publicizing the cleanup of the databases, right?

We don't go pointing fingers and blaming people. I've always believed, let's go get the job done, and no one will tell people the outcome. As we finish up soon, what is it that people should be watching out for both the in terms of social security, if that's where their minds are, or tax season and IRS-related work? Well, I don't know that I'd say it's watching out, as opposed to capability. What capabilities should be people looking for

from both of these organizations? Because I talk about digital first. Well, I think first, if you go to the Social Security website, you open my Social Security account. You've just opened a whole digital channel to operate through. That if you weren't one of the 100 million who have one, and I'm pretty darned proud of that number, by the way, because it wasn't that number when we started at all.

If you're not, you should have it. It's a capability that you can access 24-7. I think the same for the online capabilities we offer at IRS, everything from where's my refund to, you know, people's tax accounts. It's all available. And of course, we're always thinking about how to make our websites better, our presence better, how we digitize it better. But the capabilities that it's getting used right now on both is used by, you know, hundreds of millions of times a year. And so I'd say think digital first, but know that we're a phone call away or a personal visit away in either one of those anytime you want it. Well, Frank Bisignano, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.

All my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you all for joining Commissioner and CEO Frank Bisignano and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Janja Kellick.