Frank Bisignano’s cellphone lit up, and he acknowledged the caller. The president was on the line. On this morning in early October, the newly confirmed Social Security commissioner was seated in his 40th flooring workplace in Manhattan’s Tribeca that options a sweeping view of the decrease East Side and on to Brooklyn, the place he grew up in a blue-collar household to a father who spent 44 years as a customs agent, and a mom who ran a stevedoring outfit. “The president and my boss, [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent were together in the Oval Office, and the president told me it was Scott’s recommendation that I also run the IRS as its first ‘CEO,’” remembers Bisignano. “I said, ‘Yes, I’ll do whatever you want,’ and the president said that he’s counting on me to ‘make the IRS great again,’ just as he’d charged me to do with Social Security.”
Those twin jobs make Bisignano most likely the back-office administrator wielding the broadest authority in current U.S. historical past. He now oversees each the largest retirement system in the world, which pays out $1.5 trillion a yr to over 70 million beneficiaries, and a planet-topping income machine that collects over $5 trillion in annual taxes that fund over 90% of the federal authorities’s operations.
Bisignano is a phenomenon neither company has seen in a very long time, if ever; a former super-big-time private-sector CEO who’s operating each companies like they’re the sort of turnaround circumstances he’s made a profession of fixing. He’s an operator, not a bureaucrat, and he’s bringing his restructuring abilities to 2 areas that characteristic mixed working budgets of over $30 billion and workforces totaling round 150,000, and that famously want a huge raise in effectivity and customer support. The likes of tardy tax refunds at the IRS, super-slow incapacity resolutions at the SSA, and lengthy cellphone maintain instances at each companies are amongst the most distinguished failings that prod so many Americans into believing that authorities doesn’t work. None of his current predecessors had important expertise operating a huge enterprise.
By distinction, Bisignano is a Jamie Dimon protégé who constructed one of the prime careers on Wall Street by setting up and streamlining unglamorous, tech-heavy however extremely profitable capabilities similar to funds networks and treasury providers, becoming a member of the administration after serving as CEO of bank card funds colossus Fiserv.
And filling double roles is nothing new to him. “People ask me, ‘How do you do two jobs?’ And I really don’t look at it like that,” Bisignano informed Fortune on Jan. 18 throughout an unique interview, in the identical nook workplace the place he bought the name from Trump. “At Citigroup, I was at one time deputy head of operations and tech, and also chief administrative officer of the world’s largest global and investment bank. Then, under Jamie at JPMorgan, I was co-COO of the company, and also oversaw the mortgage workout program resulting in the $26 billion federal settlement in 2012 that restarted the housing market.”
In an administration staffed by a quantity of former prime enterprise of us, together with Commerce and Interior Secretaries Howard Lutnick and Doug Burgum, and Small Business Administration chief Kelly Loeffler, Bisignano is the determine who’s had by far the largest jobs in the most distinguished enterprises.
Now, Bisignano is bringing what he calls the identical digital-first method, deployment of rigorous KPIs for managers, and relentless staff constructing to each companies that he marshaled with such success in his earlier life.
But the highlight is now skilled big-time on how he handles the coming tax season that guarantees a by no means earlier than seen deluge of money refunds, and large modifications in the code that can make returns much more sophisticated than normal to course of. Trump and Bessent maintain proclaiming that the One Big Beautiful Bill means huge money again to taxpayers, and so they understand that if the IRS screws up by delaying the bounty or shortchanging taxpayers by mistake, they’ll lose a lot of the goodwill they see coming their means.
Bisignano’s fast work at the SSA confounded even Elizabeth Warren, and factors to main enhancements at the IRS
Prior to Bisignano’s arrival, from December of 2023 till the present chief’s Senate affirmation of May 6, a parade of 4 SSA commissioners and performing commissioners cycled by means of the place. These chiefs departed quick partly as a result of they bought frequent hammerings in Congress over the company’s poor cellphone and face-to-face service to beneficiaries. The listing of metrics which have improved over his quick tenure are spectacular. First, the web site is now operating round the clock (beforehand it was down 29 hours a week or 17% of the time). Phone wait instances have shrunk dramatically: In June of final yr the common time on maintain earlier than talking to an agent was 20 minutes, that shrunk to an all-time low of seven minutes in September. Meanwhile, the SSA cellphone service dealt with 68 million callers in fiscal yr 2025, 67% greater than in FY 2024. Bisignano maintained software and appeals processing throughout the authorities shutdown and supplied time beyond regulation to work the days round Christmas, that are federal holidays; 66% of employees confirmed up. In one other win, the commissioner orchestrated new workflows that lowered the time for processing incapacity claims from 240 to 209 days, and curbed the backlog to 865,000 from 1.26 million.
According to an SSA press launch, at a assembly with Bisignano in July, Sen. Elizabeth Warren “expressed disbelief about the data” supplied by the commissioner and his employees displaying a fast, substantial discount in wait instances for callers on the nationwide SSA 800 quantity. The legislator and commissioner agreed to an audit of the reported stats by the Office of the Inspector General. In a report revealed on Dec. 22, the OIG backed Bisignano, concluding: “The SSA’s publicly reported metrics were accurate, and its overall telephone performance improved during FY 2025.”
Bisignano rose as a “fixer” for Sandy Weill, Jamie Dimon, and Henry Kravis
The grandson of Italian immigrants, Bisignano attended Baker University, a liberal arts faculty in Kansas, the place he received trophies as a nationally ranked bowler. In 1994, he bought his first huge break when Dimon employed him at Travelers to run securities operations at its Smith Barney unit. He captained a strutting softball staff of Italian Americans who dubbed themselves “the Paisanos” and sported floppy hats, like these of pizza-makers, on the area. As Dimon and Weill rolled up the acquisitions en path to forming what would ultimately tower as Citigroup, Bisignano’s position in IT grew, and by mid-2001, he was managing 16,000 employees in decrease Manhattan.
As the Twin Towers burned on 9/11, Bisignano rushed to the avenue, megaphone in hand, and roared, “Walk north!” He then led a parade of 1000’s of Citi employees to an operations heart close to Penn Station, and saved the financial institution’s computer systems whirring throughout the weeks of chaos that adopted.
In 2002 Bisignano took cost at a Citi backwater known as Global Transactions Services that was then shedding $3 billion a yr. He reinvented GTS as a venue the place multinationals might outsource foreign exchange providers and accounting; simply three years later, the franchise was producing over $1 billion in revenue, and stays a main moneymaker for Citi to this day. In late 2005, the newly arrived Dimon lured Bisignano to JPMorgan as chief administrative officer, then enlisted this seasoned disaster supervisor to restore the foreclosure-laden mortgage portfolio at the former Washington Mutual, the subprime lender that JPM salvaged at the authorities’s behest throughout the Global Financial Crisis.
Bisignano jetted every day to California on the WaMu project, then headed again to New York every night time to obtain chemotherapy for throat most cancers he believes could have resulted from inhaling poisonous soot on 9/11. His trademark gravelly voice is a legacy of the surgical procedure that made him a survivor. Bisignano additionally bought Dimon’s nod to combine one other casualty, Bear Stearns, into the JPM fold. The deal price $250 million, and for that value, JPM bought all of Bear’s operations, plus the new, ultra-fancy, 47-story headquarters that price $1.1 billion to construct, and the place the JPM brass decamped for years throughout the development of their new hub on Park Avenue.
In 2013 KKR cofounder Henry Kravis, after which prime supervisor and now co-CEO Scott Nuttall, recruited Bisignano to restore arguably the worst huge funding the personal fairness big ever made, stricken bank card funds processor First Data. Bisignano reworked the “dumb bricks” that solely swiped playing cards into countertop terminals-cum-computers branded Clover, boasting analytical instruments that helped handle inventories and inform managers which waiters have been promoting the priciest bottles of wine, and reminding them to supply the identical vintages when the connoisseurs that ordered these labels final time returned. In 2019 Bisignano bought First Data to Fiserv, creating a big producing over $20 billion a yr in income that owns 6 million terminals worldwide and processes 44% of America’s bank card funds. Next got here the calls from Trump who, together with Bessent, considered the challenges at the SSA and IRS as proper in the wheelhouse of the supervisor who’d been a prime architect in constructing two of the nation’s main banks, and led a pair of the largest gamers in expediting the cashless financial system.
The 2025 tax season will show a essential test for Bisignano
Before Bisignano took cost, the IRS went by means of an unimaginable 5 “acting commissioners,” beginning at Trump’s inauguration, turnover that outspins even the revolving door at SSA. The president himself devised a resolution to place a regular hand on the wobbling controls. Trump first named Bessent as performing commissioner and shortly thereafter created the new place of CEO, tapping Bisignano. The title clearly signaled that Bisignano would run the day-to-day enterprise at IRS. “Scott loved the CEO idea,” declares Bisignano.
“It will be the most important tax season ever,” observes the new CEO, and Trump and Bessent have been echoing that sentiment, with the POTUS lately declaring that we’re headed for “the biggest tax season of all time!”
Trump and Bessent are trumpeting that much more Americans ought to get refunds this yr than final, and that they’ll be huge. In Bessent’s phrases, this will likely be “a gigantic refund year.” In current interviews, he has estimated that the common wage earner will obtain round $1,000 extra in 2025, and that, in complete, the IRS will return round $150 billion greater than in 2024 (that’s 45% over final yr). His numbers additionally suggest that roughly 150 million Americans would get refunds this yr versus 104 million in 2024.
What makes this yr (primarily based on 2025 tax returns) such a bountiful season for money again from the IRS? The purpose is twofold. First, the OBBB Act hatched half a dozen new tax advantages. It created deductions of as much as $25,000 on suggestions, and to a max of $12,500 on time beyond regulation pay. Purchasers of new automobiles assembled in the U.S. who take out automotive loans get to write down off $10,000 in curiosity. Seniors age 65 and older win a further deduction of $6,000. The cap on deductions for state and native taxes rises from $10,000 to $40,000. The normal deduction will increase by $750 to $31,500, and the little one credit score waxes from $2,000 to $2,200. Attached to all the new provisions are phaseouts that start at totally different earnings ranges. The IRS will even problem the new Form 4547, which implements the “Trump Accounts,” the tax-advantaged financial savings autos for youngsters established by the OBBB.
Second, although Trump signed the OBBB on July 4, the breaks apply for all of 2025. But the laws left in place the withholding schedule from 2024. Hence, Americans have been successfully sending an additional portion of their paychecks to the IRS that they’ll quickly recoup.
Bisignano stresses that it’s IT, not the scale of personnel, at each the SSA and IRS that can deliver higher, and quicker, customer support, and at the latter, enhance not simply the likes of well timed refunds however collections. President Biden famously put in a plan to boost the IRS’s rightful take by hiring 87,000 new brokers. Bisignano says that below Trump, it didn’t occur. “We have a system that ensures that we collect as much as humanly possible that’s appropriate,” says Bisignano. “We have the smallest IRS we’ve ever had. Our capital is technology and people. They work hand in hand; technology guides you to best deploy your people. The answer to all these organizations is technology, it’s not counting the heads. Investing in IT is the best route to enhanced servicing, and with the advent of AI, we’ll see tremendous advancements over the next two years.”
The new CEO avows that he’s putting in many of the identical disciplines utilized by Weill and Dimon. “We do the weekly reviews at both the IRS and SSA,” he relates. “We convene senior managers, and we have an hour and a half meeting, and they have to go through the KPIs for the week. We do what we always did going back to the Sandy Weill and Jamie Dimon days.” The CEO provides that after a month, he convenes an all-day management assembly the place “we beat the hell out of the place to make it better.” He says that no such confabs existed earlier than his arrival, and that communication amongst the prime brass was minimal.
The sort of team-building he realized from his heroes additionally looms massive. “Before I came to IRS, there was always confusion about who was in charge,” he says. “The way Jamie and Sandy ran it, and the way Henry Kravis and Scott Nuttall ran it, it’s one team with one set of objectives and one set of metrics. One team, one dream. We have an HR department to give people the tools they need to deliver the goods, not, for example, to [just] have an HR department.” He’s decided to stage the silos, and says he’s already shrunk layers of administration at the IRS from as many as 11 or 12, to 5 – 6, giving the CEO much more entry to the managers operating every little thing from felony investigations to arranging the new withholding schedules for 2026.
For now, Bisignano says he’s “maniacally focused on delivering a great season,” and that a key metric will likely be the timeliness of the refunds. He’ll then pivot to what he calls a “nine prong” plan to reengineer the IRS group by 2027. Meanwhile, consider it or not, he’s getting steerage from the departed IRS commissioners. Bisignano relates that he bumped into an ex-chief who knowledgeable him that he and 6 different former commissioners and performing commissioners had a chat group: “I looked at what they were saying about my appointment in the chat group, and it was things like, ‘This is the real deal.’” He relates that one member remarked on-line, “How can he do both jobs?” and one other responded, “I looked him up. It looks like he’s done it before!”
So Bisignano invited all seven of his predecessors in the chat group to dinner in Washington, and the dialog raised his spirits. “They were saying that this is the best thing they’d seen and that a real guy was running the joint,” he studies. The execs had seen firsthand what was incorrect, and acknowledged that the IRS’s first CEO is richly geared up to ship the repair.
