Anniversary Special
Happy Birthday PMS
Mortgage club PMS has hit the grand old age of 15 but it’s still a baby compared to founder and executive chairman John Malone. Sarah Davidson speaks to him and John Cupis about the PMS journey
“In the early days, I used to bump off my major competitors,” laughs John Malone with a cheeky glint in his eye. This is the answer PMS’s executive chairman gives me when I ask how he got his mortgage industry nickname John “The Godfather” Malone. This is typical Malone. Sending severed horse’s heads to the managing directors of competitor mortgage clubs is extreme but if I’m being 100% honest there’s a steeliness to Malone, who will be 68 in December, that makes me think for just one second I might not put it past him. But with that steel is a tremendous loyalty to the people he respects and likes. PMS managing director John Cupis acknowledges that it is this loyalty “bedrock” that has helped to build the mortgage club into the successful business it is today – fifteen years after Malone set it up as Premier Mortgage Service on 5th November 1996. Cupis and Malone are known in the industry for being a chalk and cheese partnership and Cupis is reserved when asked what it’s like working with The Godfather. “A lot of the staff at PMS have been with
John from the beginning,” says Cupis. “There is considerable loyalty for him in the business partly driven by his extensive experience in the industry but also I think
because people think it’s fun working with him.
“He just wants the best and for all of us to triumph. When things perhaps don’t go so well we all have our moments, don’t we, but I think equally when things go well he is very generous with his praise for what we do and the team we have.”
“I’ve always felt very supportive of what intermediaries do and the advice they give. I’ve always thought they play an incred- ibly important part within the food chain in financial services”
Malone (not someone known for excessive humility) is gracious when he hears this.
“I do enjoy a bit of fun, I enjoy myself but I do also work exceptionally hard. We go on nights out and have great fun but what’s more, we support each other,” he
52 Mortgage introducer NOVEMBER 2011
says. “Staff to me are very important. Our staff have stayed and are very loyal and I actually firmly believe they enjoy working with us.”
In the fAmIly
Loyalty in business is prized but in the mortgage industry it is even more fundamental to success. Businesses in this sector are built and broken on relationships and the intricate loyalties that exist between people making decisions behind corporate brand names. Malone has always been alive to this fact and has not only instilled loyalty in his staff but has also engendered a network of respect among lenders, other mortgage network and club heads and foremost, brokers.
He is self-styled as “the voice of the
broker” and it is a passion of his that has sometimes found him treading a thin line between mortgage club chairman and broker on the beat. It is also what has lead to him being on the National Fraud Forum as the broker representative.
“I’ve always tried to be straight, be with
brokers and to be transparent in what we’ve done,” he says. “And I’d say I’ve always tried to understand their plight. It’s a hard job for anyone to go out there sell, advise, be compliant, keep all transaction records. It takes discipline. Plus you have to have the knowledge and understanding
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