From Fannie Mae's first PM to Pathward Innovation with Suhas Reddy

What if millions of Americans had already proven they could handle a mortgage payment, and the system simply refused to count it?

Reggie sits down with Suhas Reddy, Head of Product at Pathward Bank, to unpack what it really means to build product inside the most regulated corners of financial services. Suhas was among the early product leaders at Fannie Mae, driving the Lighthouse Project that later transformed one of the world's largest secondary mortgage institutions into a customer-centric, digital-first product organisation. He now leads product at Pathward as SVP of Product Management across the Nasdaq-listed sponsor bank's B2B products, payments, issuing, lending, acquiring, and commercial finance, developing the products that enable fintechs and brands to reach customers at scale.

The conversation covers the 10-year product build that became an overnight pandemic success story, why Suhas treats risk and compliance as design constraints rather than roadblocks, and the title insurance battle he fought, and lost, years before it became national policy. They get into the philosophy of “Legos, not unicorns” as a framework for building scalable fintech infrastructure, and the human-centric conviction that turned rental payment history into a mortgage underwriting signal, unlocking homeownership for borrowers the system had previously ignored. 

Suhas continues to build infrastructure that expands financial access for underserved communities through Pathward's product platform.