Frank Bisignano testifies before the Senatorial Finance Committee on his appointment to be a commissioner of the Social Security Administration, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on March 25, 2025.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty images
The Senate voted to confirm Frank Bisignano as a new Social Security Administration Commissioner, inaugurating a new leadership in a federal agency that has already undergone many changes this year as part of the Trump Administration Government Department of Effectiveness.
Bisignano, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Payment and Financial Technology Company FISERV Inc.was appointed to serve as a social security commissioner in December by the president elected then Donald Trump. Trump began his second term on January 20.
Social Security Administration, which provides controls of monthly services to more than 73 million Beneficiaries, currently operates under temporary leadership. The acting commissioner, Leland Dudek, took the bar in February, replacing Michelle King, who resigned From the temporary role due to concerns concerning DOGE access to sensitive data.
A federal judge has since granted a preliminary injunction This prevents DOGE from accessing personally identifiable information, in particular social security numbers, medical records, addresses, banking files, tax information and other sensitive data.
Bisignano's confirmation vote on Tuesday was divided by party lines. Before the vote, the Republicans had expressed their support for Trump's candidate, while the Democrats raised concerns about the potential potential of Bisignano and his alleged ties with Doge.
More personal finances:
Social Security reduces the services of the timing rate
The Trump administration restarts student loan collections
What experts say about the complaint of social security services early
On the eve of the Senate confirmation vote, the Democrats, including meaning. Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon, organized a rally outside the Senate building to oppose the appointment of Bisignano.
“We want Donald Trump to be held with workers' families and the elderly and stop the social security attack once and for all,” said Wyden, a member of the Senate finance committee at the Monday event.
After Tuesday's Senate’s vote, defenders' defense groups expressed concern about the new management of the agency.
“This vote was an opportunity for the Senate to reject the decimation of Social Security and to ask that Trump appoints a commissioner who will stop bleeding,” said Nancy Altman, president of social security work, in a statement. “Instead, each Senate republican has just signed the destruction of Social Security.”
Neither fiserv nor the White House responded to requests for CNBC comments in press weather.
Who is Frank Bisignano?
Bisignano is currently serving as President De Fiserv, which deals with more than 2.5 billions of dollars in payments per day, according to his testimony from the Senate.
Bisignano came to this role after being president and CEO of First Data Corp., who became a public in 2015 and combined with FISERV in 2019.
Before that, Bisignano was co-responsible for the exploitation for JPMorgan Chase and CEO of his mortgage banking unit. Before JPMorgan Chase, he occupied several roles in Citigroup.
Bisignano was raised in a multi -generational immigrant household in Brooklyn, New York, according to his Senate testimony. Bisignano's father was a 46 -year -old employee of the Ministry of the Treasury who worked in the application of customs.
“He was the hardest person I have known,” said Bisignano in his testimony from the Senate. “I consider federal workers from this point of view.”
What the legislators said about the appointment of Bisignano
During the consideration of the appointment of Bisignano, the Democrats repeatedly raised concerns concerning its viability to lead the agency.
Warren and Wyden sent a letter in Bisignano before his confirmation hearing in March to ask him for his point of view on the privatization of the agency. Doge's efforts to “dig” the agency and “deprive Americans from the social security benefits they have won and need” could open the way to a “private sector correction”, said Democratic leaders.
In his testimony from the Senate, Bisignano said that he did not intend to privatize the agency.
“I never thought of privatizing,” said Bisignano. “It is not a word that anyone who ever told me about. I don't see this institution as something other than a government agency that is heading for the American public.”
During the Senate hearing, Bisignano also faced questions about his involvement in recent changes to the Social Security Administration and with Doge.
Wyden presented An anonymous letter of denunciation of a “principal employee of the Social Security Administration who recently left the Agency”, who declared that Bisignano had been informed of the “main operations of ASS, staff and management decisions”.
In response to a question of whether he “would lock Doge out”, Bisignano has promised to protect personally identifiable information.
“I'm going to do everything you need to protect private information,” said Bisignano.
However, during a February interview CNBCBisignano said he was “fundamentally a Dogey”.
While the Democrats have questioned the appointment of Bisignano, the CEO of Fiserv received praise from the Republicans and the former CEO of Citigroup, Sandy Weill.
In a Mars interview CNBCWeill congratulated Bisignano as a “big manager” and a “great person”.
“He worked for me, and I think he is the best operations that I have ever met in my life,” said Weill, adding that we would be “very lucky to have it in this work”.
What Bisignano said about Social Security
During a walk Senate confirmation audienceWhile answering the senators' questions about a multitude of problems faced by the Social Security Administration, Bisignano said it would be important to “put the beneficiaries first”.
“The possibility of receiving payments in time and precisely is employment one,” said Bisignano.
Among the priorities, Bisignano said that he would underline if he was confirmed, in particular the reduction in the social security error rate, citing an office of the report of the Inspector General who put it at around 1%.
“It is a very high payment processing error rate,” said Bisignano, the appellant “five too high decimals”.
Agency's reduction in the error rate will help eliminate Overly-paid problemswhere the beneficiaries receive too much money in their service checks. These errors, which can take months or years to catch, generally leave beneficiaries due to the important sums to the social security administration.
From exercises 2015 to 2022, Social Security Administration paid approximately $ 71.8 billion in inappropriate payments on nearly 8.6 billions of Dollars in benefits, representing approximately 0.84%, according to an office in 2024 of the Inspector General report.
The agency is currently in the process of adjusting the container rate by default to 50% for certain advantages assigned by overpayed, such as retirement, survivors and disability insurance. Under President Joe Biden, the default rate had been reduced to 10% of the monthly advantages or $ 10, according to the largest.
“I will make sure that we recover all the money that we should recover, but on the other hand, we must also be humans in the process,” Bisignano told the Senate about the claws of the overpayment.
Bisignano also declared that he planned to reduce the long -chronically long waiting times that the Americans faced during the agency's request for help, including when the number 800 or when requesting disability services.
Having to wait more than 20 minutes on the phone is not acceptable, said Bisignano. Social Security Administration data show that around 46% of calls receive an answer, probably because people are discouraged and hang up, he said.
“I think we could achieve this in less than a minute,” said Bisignano about waiting times from the agency's phone, in part by putting AI for people who respond to phones to encourage them more quickly to the information they need to answer questions from individuals.
Bisignano also promised to study why it takes so much time to process disability requests. Initial eligibility determinations are currently taking about seven monthsA waiting time that has doubled since before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the urban institute.
