Hamptons International Mortgages is based in a smart, unobtrusive block on the edge of the Square Mile in the City of London. And to an extent this description sums up its managing director Kevin Duffy – very close to his target market but usually prepared to let others take centre stage.

Having said this it would be wrong to suggest that he is afraid to speak his mind and at times he can be brutally honest about both his work and his life. Following a degree in the disparate subjects of English literature and sports science he began working in financial services in the late 1980s when he joined NatWest as a graduate management trainee. Then, after seven years and a number of different roles within the organisation he quit to join Charcol and became a mortgage adviser. “I joined Charcol in September 1995, on the same day as Mark Harris [now managing director of Savills Private Finance], and we were thrown in at the deep end. Neither of us had worked in mortgages before, but we weren’t given time to pause for breath, it was very much a case of there is your desk and your phone, now get on with it. It was high pressure and good fun, but it also expedited my divorce from my first wife. It was not a family friendly lifestyle,” he recalls.

His next role saw him move to start-up operation Savills Private Finance after just two years, because he had become disillusioned with the direction Charcol was taking. He says: “Charcol was the market leader but I think it has lost its ’boutique’ appeal and has become more of a ‘supermarket’. When I joined Charcol still had its identity, it was a niche player and synonymous with mortgage broking. Now I think there is a large, bureaucratic strcucture which, from what I have observed, is stifling in terms of creativity and development opportunities.”

Ever since he quit his first job, Duffy has been moving between firms on a fairly regular basis. In 1997 he went to Savills and became the fifth person on the payroll, and in 2000 he quit again to form his own start-up brokerage Square Mile. Shortly afterwards, in 2001, he left to set up the new mortgage division of global estate agency, Hamptons.

Duffy explains: “Hamptons had had unsuccessful outsourced relationships with the likes of Rothschilds in the past, and came to the conclusion that to make money from mortgage broking as an estate agency business, it had to have its own division.

“I represented a candidate with previous brokerage experience, previous agency experience and the commercial acumen acquired in setting up my own business. It launched in September 2001 with three people and now has 27 business generators (including the appointed representative business) and this year will place £1bn of mortgage finance.”

When pressed to explain why his career has taken this apparently retrograde step, he comes out fighting. Duffy says: “I wouldn’t be here now without the experience of setting up Square Mile. People love to lecture about what it takes to set up and run a business, but very few have had the courage to leave an employer, remortgage the house and put everything on the line to try and make a start-up business work. I am lucky here. Despite being a majority-owned subsidiary of Hamptons Estates, the management does enjoy a significant equity share and I am given an appropriate level of autonomy to set the agenda for growth and strategy.”

From a standing start, Duffy appears fully committed to driving the Hamptons brand forward, while retaining what he terms its cachet appeal. To this end, he is helped by the fact that the estate agency arm of Hamptons deals with the top end of the property market from its base of 60 UK offices, with a further six overseas ranging from Barbados to Hong Kong, and the fact that it now registers over 60,000 applicants a year.

He admits: “It helps that the bulk of the business is high-net worth – the average loan is £275,000 and the average loan to value is well under 70%. So the average property we deal with is worth about £500,000. But we are committed to doubling in size over the next two years to the point where we are placing £2bn a year by 2006, and have 50 writers arranging finance. Once you grow beyond that size I think you lose your identity and your exclusivity rather than being a broker of choice.

Having acknowledged the role of the estate agency side within the business, Duffy bemoans what he sees as the Government’s dual standards as regards statutory regulation. He says: “The report from the Office of Fair Trading did not go far enough, and on the whole matter of regulation I am completely disillusioned with the fact we have a Government that has decided to regulate mortgage advice – which in my opinion was not required – but not estate agents.

“The mortgage industry has been lumped in with other aspects of financial services when the risks involved in selling mortgages, and the consumer protection it affords, have very different characteristics to other areas of the financial services sector. I think the industry has been unfairly victimised because of mis-selling scandals, which predominantly have been the fault of rogue IFAs rather than rogue mortgage advisers.”

It is clear that Duffy is no fan of Government housing policy . He says: “I find it incredible that the big issue for this Government is the shortage of housing for key workers and yet it is wasting millions of pounds on regulation. This is money that could have been set aside for the more serious problem of affordable housing.”

While Duffy is confident the Hamptons model will prosper as a result of regulation he believes it will be difficult for smaller firms to maintain their independence. “Regulation will cost more money than people think. Then there are the ongoing costs for training staff, and the cost of management being diverted from pursuits which generate revenue, to using it to limit the potential for liability. I can see their time being consumed acting defensivley instead of constructively,” he says.

But, conversely, he also thinks that there are too many network propositions for the number of brokers who want to become appointed representatives, which will mean that some advisers are going to get burnt if their network folds. Duffy urges prospective ARs to look at where they want to be 12 months after regulation, rather than where they want to be on the day of regulation.

He says: “If you look at the figures from the FSA on the number of applications it has received then the numbers are well down on what they were expecting, which suggests there is going to be a ‘gold-rush’ of applications come September. I worry that decisions will be made without thorough consideration of all of the available options. I think there is going to be a significant shake up in the next 12 months. There will be networks which have enticed ARs on generous financial terms, that in the fullness of time will find there are not enough financial advisers to make it viable, or those that they do have require more maintenance than they budgeted for.”

Duffy is passionate about regulation, and like others in his position he appears to have retained a genuine affinity for the market and the people in the industry. As such he has joined the London contact group for AMI and is helping it in its aim to be recognised as the industry trade body.

Questioned about whether the criticism of its chairman, Charles Gooding, will seriously damage its reputation, he admits that it will be interesting to see what happens, but does not agree with the sensationalism that accompanied the issue. He says: “To my mind the extent of any personal advantage which he may be able to seek is not at such an extreme level as to disqualify him from doing his job. The AMI constituents will have their say and as with any trade association there will be new people who want to get on board and others who want to step down.”

Despite this, and his past history of seizing new opportunities Duffy denies that he is inclined to stand himself, as usual preferring to stay clos, but on the fringe, observing developments and waiting for opportunities.