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Speaking exclusively to Mortgage Adviser, Mr Malone, managing director of the mortgage club, said a decision had been made internally for him to continue in his position until the end of 2009.

A recruitment process for his replacement began earlier this year after the shock departure of Steve Atkins in August 2007. Mr Atkins was originally intended to take up Mr Malone's role.

Mr Malone said: "I am building a strong team around me. A team of people I think can step up to the mark regardless of the challenges they will be faced with."

He said while the company had interviewed some "exceedingly good quality" candidates earlier this year he believed it would have been unfair to come into a business that was not going to have a good year in comparison with the last four or five.

Mr Malone said: "It would have been unfair to have brought someone in to make a comparison on that basis. We will now get these couple of bad years out of the way and whoever is going to be the key person can build the PMS proposition in the light of the changes in the market place."

Premier Mortgage Service brought in former Edeus employee Martin Reynolds in June to form part of a strategic management team to review the current proposition and develop further income streams for the club.

Mr Malone said: "Part of Mr Reynolds coming on board is to look at the business and find out exactly what we have to do to be competitive and to be able to deliver those products from the lenders to the intermediaries.

"In the next three to five years there will be some significant changes and we would like to think that we will be at the cutting edge of that."

He said he expected "two or three years down the line" Premier Mortgage Service would become much more of an advertising and marketing proposition, assisting lenders to bring their products, benefits and service to the intermediary market.

Mr Malone said: "We are looking at the systems and the connectivity we need to have in place with a variety of lenders.

"So we will obviously be very much a cost saving proposition for many lenders and we will reach the intermediaries either through our call centre staff, our account managers, key account managers, or development managers that we have out on the road and they will work hand in hand with our marketing team and the other account managers that the lenders have.

"We have resources and we have the opportunity to develop the business and to make it the number one player in the distribution market in the UK."

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