Trump Taps Fiserv CEO Bisignano for Social Security Chief

By Nancy Cook
Bloomberg News
(TNS)

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump is nominating Frank Bisignano, the chief executive officer of fintech and payments company Fiserv Inc., to be the commissioner of the Social Security Administration.

“Frank is a business leader, with a tremendous track record of transforming large corporations. He will be responsible to deliver on the Agency’s commitment to the American People for generations to come!,” Trump said in a post to his Truth Social network on Wednesday.

Bisignano is a veteran of JPMorgan Chase & Co., where he served as co-chief operating officer and chief executive officer of mortgage banking, and before that Citigroup Inc. He left Wall Street to lead First Data Corp., a payments processor, undertaking a series of deals and leading the firm through an initial public offering in 2015.

Fiserv acquired First Data for $22 billion in 2019, a financial merger that created a payments processing giant. Bisignano led the combined company first as president and chief operating officer before becoming CEO in July 2020 and chair of the board in May 2022, according to his biography on Fiserv’s website.

Fiserv competes with companies like Stripe and Worldpay. Its shares have risen more than 60% this year, and it has a market capitalization of more than $122 billion.

In a presentation on Dec. 4 at the UBS Global Technology Conference, Fiserv’s Chief Financial Officer Robert Hau said that Bisignano was missing the event because he was “down in Brazil” for a product launch.

Bisignano is the second fintech CEO to garner a Trump nod on Wednesday. The president-elect earlier tapped technologist Jared Isaacman of Shift4 Payments to lead NASA.

Troubled Agency

If confirmed by the Senate, Bisignano would head an agency responsible for running the Social Security program, a retirement trust fund that faces a budget shortfall and which is politically risky to change because older Americans who benefit from those payments make up a crucial bloc of voters.

While Trump has pledged to protect Social Security benefits, critics say that many of the policies he says he plans to enact in office would actually weaken the program.

A nonpartisan budget watchdog in October estimated that Trump’s second-term agenda would drive the program to insolvency three years earlier and slash benefits by nearly a third.

The group cited proposals including plans to deport unauthorized immigrants who now pay into Social Security, end taxes on overtime and tips, and end taxation of Social Security benefits. All those measures would shrink revenue for the trust fund, the group said.

Trump’s plans for sweeping new tariffs on US adversaries and allies alike would also either raise inflation and cost-of living adjustments or reduce taxable payroll, they said.

Trump has said his tariffs will bring in new revenue for the federal government and that tax cuts will spur economic growth, dismissing claims from most mainstream economists that trade levies threaten to reduce or divert trade flows.

During the campaign, Trump pledged to eliminate taxes on Social Security payments for seniors, which would benefit some elderly Americans but strain future benefits for those yet to retire. That plan threatens to also complicate discussions in Washington about how to find new ways to fund Social Security.

— With assistance from Stacy-Marie Ishmael.

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