Ex-JPMorgan Exec Joins Trump Team to Fix Social Security

A former Wall Street heavyweight is stepping in to help fix America's aging Social Security system.

Matt Zames, a former top executive at JPMorgan Chase (one of the biggest banks in the United States), is joining the Trump administration as an advisor to the Social Security Administration (SSA) — the government agency that sends monthly payments to retirees and other Americans who qualify.

Here's what makes this interesting: Zames is taking the job for free. He's helping out a former colleague, Frank Bisignano, who became the head of Social Security last year. His main task is modernization — updating the agency's technology, which still runs on systems that are decades old.

Who is Matt Zames?

• He was JPMorgan's Chief Operating Officer (the person who runs day-to-day operations) for about five years.
• He became famous for cleaning up the bank's "London Whale" mess — a risky trade that cost JPMorgan roughly $6 billion in losses.
• He was once seen as a possible replacement for CEO Jamie Dimon before leaving in 2017.
• After JPMorgan, he worked at private equity firm Cerberus (a company that buys and improves other businesses), then started his own advisory firm.

Why does this matter? The Social Security agency faces two big problems:

• Its technology is badly outdated, making it slow and hard to manage.
• Its retirement trust fund (the pool of money used to pay benefits) is projected to run dry in less than a decade. If that happens, it could force benefit cuts for millions of Americans.

Zames is coming in as a special government employee, meaning he can serve for up to 130 days. But since he's working part-time, that time can be stretched out over a longer period. He officially starts Monday at the agency's headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland — where a nameplate for his office has already been installed.

Bottom line: A veteran banker known for fixing costly problems is now taking on one of the government's oldest and most important systems.

This is an AI-generated summary. Read the original article at: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/21/jpmorgan-matt-zames-social-security-administration.html