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Mortgageforce founder Rob Clifford and industry heavyweight Kevin Duffy are enjoying working together to develop the business
When Kevin Duffy was made mortgageforce's chief operating officer earlier this year, many in the industry interpreted it as a sign that the brokerage's founder Rob Clifford was planning to take a step back.
The appointment of Duffy - an industry heavyweight whose CV includes stints as managing director of Hamptons Mortgages and Robert Sterling - came three years after mortgageforce had been bought by West Bromwich for pound 6.8m.
So with Duffy on board, was this a sign that Clifford was about to hang up his spurs and move on to pastures new? Five months after Duffy signed on the dotted line, Clifford says nothing could be further from the truth.
"I still feel proprietary about the business that I founded and have no plans to leave mortgageforce," he says. "For more than a year West Brom had been looking at enhancing mortgageforce's senior management capability, given our aspiration to grow the business."
At a time when many mortgage firms are struggling to stay in business as a result of the credit crunch, such ambition is unusual to say the least.
Duffy has been charged with expanding the firm's franchise operation, encouraging existing brokerages to come under the mortgageforce banner.
And while Clifford is still a hands-on presence, there seems to be enough to keep him busy and interested in the company he created. His job specification is much broader today than it was when he started the firm. As well as being chief executive of mortgageforce, he's also director of franchising and retail income at West Brom.
"While I'm not here five days a week as I was eight years ago, I'm now also involved in other matters across the West Brom group," he says. "But mortgageforce remains my primary focus."
When Clifford set up mortgageforce in September 2000 it was the fourth brokerage he had either managed or founded. In the early 1990s he ran and built up a mortgage business for IFA Whitechurch Securities. He then founded and ran a broking business called MPI, which was eventually sold to Bank of Scotland Group in 1997. As part of the deal with BoS, Clifford...