What Fiserv's Bisignano can change if he's the Social Security boss

Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg

How difficult is navigating the Social Security Administration?

A report from the American Association of Retired Persons says the wait time for calls jumped from 13 minutes to 36 minutes between 2017 and 2023, while the number of people waiting for an initial disability claim increased from more than 500,000 to above 1.13 million. And the time to wait for a decision grew from 110 days to 218 days.

Fixing those problems, while also cutting costs, could be Frank Bisignano's job by next year. Donald Trump this week nominated Bisignano, the current chairman, president and chief executive of Fiserv, to be commissioner of the Social Security Administration.

It's a huge challenge, requiring the kind of work the longtime financial services and payment technology executive has been doing for years at JPMorgan Chase , First Data and Fiserv.

"Frank is a business leader, with a tremendous track record of transforming large corporations. He will be responsible for delivering on the Agency's commitment to the American People for generations to come!" Trump said in a social media post.

The SSA, which did not respond to a request for comment, faces a fiscal crisis, a technology deficit and a security problem.

"The Social Security Administration has long struggled with outdated IT systems that slow response times and result in large backlogs of disability insurance claims," said Aaron McPherson, principal at AFM Consulting. "I would expect this to be a focus area for someone like Bisignano who has dealt with similar issues during his time at First Data and then Fiserv."

SSA AI

Fiserv has been developing new uses for artificial intelligence for staff usage, concepts that could help the SSA streamline its operations if applied in Bisignano's potential new government post.

"Bisignano brings one key thing to the table: He has successfully run a large, complex organization," said Aaron Press, a research director at IDC Insights. "That alone makes him more qualified than many political appointees from any administration. The fact that his experience is connected to financial services is a bonus."

At American Banker's Payments Forum in March, Katie Whalen, head of North America issuer processing at Fiserv, spoke about gaining employee buy-in for AI. The SSA has about 60,000 employees working at more than 1,300 locations.

Of the 60 people whose role it is to service Fiserv's largest clients, the bank technology giant chose four to five individuals to pilot new uses for AI, Whalen said at the conference. Instead of seeing AI as a threat, these people came to "almost serve as evangelists within the broader organization," she said.

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That's a tactic Bisignano could use at the Social Security Administration.

"Frank Bisignano knows better than most how to upgrade legacy systems and implement advanced technologies like artificial intelligence," said Richard Crone, a payments consultant.

Based on an average AI-powered cost savings of 40% calculated by Crone's consulting firm, the Social Security Administration could save about $6.2 billion annually, using the Office of Management and Budget's report of $15.5 billion in SSA administrative expenses in 2023. "Bisignano could achieve this largely without any congressional action," Crone said.

Bisignano has shepherded technology projects at large enterprises for years. The 64-year-old has been CEO of Fiserv since 2020, ascending to the top job following Fiserv's $22 billion acquisition of First Data, where Bisignano became CEO in 2013. Earlier in his career, Bisignano was CEO of several mortgage banking units at JPMorgan Chase, among other positions.

In a 2013 interview with American Banker, Bisignano said First Data had "tremendous international opportunity along with domestic opportunity. It's a tech company really at the heart of it, versus banking that's different businesses."

At First Data, Bisignano oversaw a technology-driven recovery from an earnings slump in the early 2010s. A key part of that strategy was Clover, First Data's point of sale system that enabled the company to compete with emerging fintechs such as Block, PayPal and Stripe. Clover also helped First Data push into international markets and larger merchant categories.

The SSA, like the banking industry, relies on legacy infrastructure, including legacy systems like COBOL-based programming, Crone said. "Bisignano has proven success in modernizing large-scale infrastructure at First Data and Fiserv."

That experience in updating older technology could come in handy at the SSA. One of the things that has improved at Fiserv while Bisignano has been there is the modernization of its core processing architecture via the Finxact cloud-based banking platform, McPherson said. Based on open APIs, Finxact integrates a wide variety of solutions from Fiserv's existing products to those of third parties, he said.

"One of the tensions that exists in the core banking space is the all-in-one solutions offered by firms like Fiserv vs. 'best of breed' solutions that are offered by fintechs," McPherson said. "[Fiserv's Finxact] promises to resolve that tension by opening up the technical architecture to allow for more hybrid solutions."

Bisignano also has experience with managing large groups. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he led Fiserv's management, including moving about 44,000 employees off site.

More recent disclosures show Fiserv has about 41,000 employees, or a reduction of about 7%. Fiserv has closed about 100 offices since the First Data acquisition, giving Bisignano experience in rightsizing a large office network.

In a 2020 American Banker interview, Bisignano detailed a $1.2 billion cost-cutting strategy, saying the company could reduce overhead in data centers, real estate, technology infrastructure and procurement spending.

Bisignano told American Banker, "We've reduced headcount in some sites where we shut down sites … we're working to get as much of the outside spend out of the company as humanly possible. And of course there's some redundancy when you take two corporate overheads [Fiserv and First Data] and put them together."

What happens to Fiserv?

Fiserv will not announce a successor unless the U.S. Senate confirms Bisignano, which won't happen until after the company reports its fourth-quarter earnings in early 2025. In a research note, Jeffries said a strong succession plan is already in place and an external candidate has not been ruled out.

"Given how key to [Fiserv's stock performance] Bisignano has been, and the uncertainty of whether he will be forced to divest his holdings, we expect the stock to be choppy near-term," Jeffries said.

Bisignano's Fiserv stock holdings are about $665 million. Bisignano's yearly compensation as CEO of First Data was more than $100 million in 2017, according to The New York Times, making him one of the country's highest paid corporate executives. In 2023, Bisignano signed a contract with Fiserv that paid him about $27 million per year, according to Equilar, noting a CEO-to-median employee pay ratio of 380-1.

Bisignano has also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican politicians, including six-figure donations to Trump.

Fiserv did not comment beyond a company release. "I am honored to have this once in a lifetime opportunity to serve my country. I thank President-elect Trump and, if confirmed, look forward to applying my experience to transform our social security system," Bisignano said in the release.

Fiserv's release also quoted Lead Director Doyle Simons as saying, "Under Frank, Fiserv has excelled in advancing finance, technology and payments innovations to the benefit of financial institutions, businesses and communities large and small. Succession planning has always been a priority for the Board, and we will follow our well-established succession planning process to select a new CEO to continue to build on this momentum."

Bisignano's leadership in working with external providers like Accenture, IBM and Microsoft also positions him to bring necessary expertise to the SSA, Crone said. "Bisignano's success at the SSA could become a cornerstone of Trump's broader vision for cost optimization in government," Crone said.