In his role as vice president and chief product officer at Discover Home Loans (DHL), Santosh Kumar has transformed operations and technology at the firm. One of his most significant contributions is the creation of an award-winning, end-to-end digital process for home equity loans and mortgage refinances that operates at approximately 50% lower cost than the mortgage industry average. Over the past eight years, Kumar’s leadership has played a major role in growing DHL from a startup to the top U.S. lender of home equity loans.

Kumar, a passionate and well-respected leader at Discover and throughout the industry, brings a forward-thinking growth mindset to his work and a passion for team empowerment. His leadership exemplifies Discover’s value of putting customers first by deploying ever-evolving technology to improve the customer experience. Kumar’s team schedules two technology releases per month, streamlining the documentation processes to put forth new ideas, obtaining leadership approvals, and obtaining buy-in from all relevant stakeholders. 

As a result, DHL customers can now handle even more tasks digitally, such as debt consolidation and tracking their loan status 24/7, with real-time updates on the milestone tracker enabled by back-end automation. Throughout development and implementation of this goal, Kumar has empowered his product teams to work in an Agile environment and to fully own their functions. He grounds his team in performance metrics, ethics, compliance, and doing what is right for the customer.

Name:

Santosh Kumar

Title:

Vice President & Chief Product Officer

Company Name:

Discover Home Loans