Why I became a wealth manager
18th September 2026
This week's blog is a background of our Founder, Peter Wands - as always, thanks for reading!
I did not grow up wanting to manage money. I grew up in Lytham St Annes, on a short stretch of Lancashire coast that sits next to Blackpool, England's most deprived larger seaside town, while Lytham St Annes is one of only a handful of English seaside towns that bucks that trend entirely. Three towns, Lytham, St Annes and Blackpool, close enough to walk between, and a real gap in fortune between them that a child notices without needing it explained. It shaped how I think about money more than any qualification I have taken since.
A happy childhood, an unconventional start
None of that made my own childhood unhappy. I lived across from a public park and spent most of it there, dropping my school bag at home and heading straight back out. I went through Catholic primary and secondary school, and while I am not a particularly religious adult, the values that were embedded in me at that stage, honesty, responsibility, taking a duty of care seriously, still sit underneath how I run my business today.
I was a strong student, especially in maths and the sciences, and I left school after sixth form rather than going on to university. Living independently and going straight into work was, looking back, the first sign that I would end up building something rather than following the standard route through it. Over the following years I worked as an apprentice aircraft engineer, spent a spell in the Royal Navy, and had a supervisory role at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, at the time the region's largest employer. Each left something behind: the aircraft engineering gave me a structured, methodical way of solving problems that I still use; the Navy gave me a level of discipline that has never left; and sales management roles I held later taught me how to actually communicate with people, a skill that turns out to matter as much as any technical qualification in this job.
Solid career progression was not easy to come by on that stretch of coast, so in my early twenties I moved to Leeds.
Finding the work, almost by accident
I kept studying throughout this period, picking up qualifications through distance learning, some for career reasons and some purely out of interest. But it was economics and a natural ability with numbers that pulled me toward financial services, and I joined HBOS in their home insurance division. I have been in and around financial services ever since, close to twenty years now.
The move into advice specifically came from a friend who was already a financial adviser and thought I would be suited to it. She was right, though I did not know that yet. I got the exams done quickly and started at a small advice practice in Leeds, and it was there that everything clicked into place. This was the work I was supposed to be doing.
What struck me early, and has never left, was the weight of what clients actually hand over when they walk into an adviser's office. Not just money. Trust, and often a level of vulnerability they would never admit to out loud. Coming from a sales background before this, I understood exactly what the profession should not look like: persuasion dressed up as advice, product recommendations shaped by what pays the adviser rather than what serves the client. Even in a well-regulated market like the UK, too much of the industry still optimises for the adviser's income first and performs client focus only where compliance requires it. I felt that gap early, and I have spent the rest of my career trying to close it in whatever practice I have been part of.
A happy childhood, an unconventional start
None of that made my own childhood unhappy. I lived across from a public park and spent most of it there, dropping my school bag at home and heading straight back out. I went through Catholic primary and secondary school, and while I am not a particularly religious adult, the values that were embedded in me at that stage, honesty, responsibility, taking a duty of care seriously, still sit underneath how I run my business today.
I was a strong student, especially in maths and the sciences, and I left school after sixth form rather than going on to university. Living independently and going straight into work was, looking back, the first sign that I would end up building something rather than following the standard route through it. Over the following years I worked as an apprentice aircraft engineer, spent a spell in the Royal Navy, and had a supervisory role at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, at the time the region's largest employer. Each left something behind: the aircraft engineering gave me a structured, methodical way of solving problems that I still use; the Navy gave me a level of discipline that has never left; and sales management roles I held later taught me how to actually communicate with people, a skill that turns out to matter as much as any technical qualification in this job.
Solid career progression was not easy to come by on that stretch of coast, so in my early twenties I moved to Leeds.
Finding the work, almost by accident
I kept studying throughout this period, picking up qualifications through distance learning, some for career reasons and some purely out of interest. But it was economics and a natural ability with numbers that pulled me toward financial services, and I joined HBOS in their home insurance division. I have been in and around financial services ever since, close to twenty years now.
The move into advice specifically came from a friend who was already a financial adviser and thought I would be suited to it. She was right, though I did not know that yet. I got the exams done quickly and started at a small advice practice in Leeds, and it was there that everything clicked into place. This was the work I was supposed to be doing.
What struck me early, and has never left, was the weight of what clients actually hand over when they walk into an adviser's office. Not just money. Trust, and often a level of vulnerability they would never admit to out loud. Coming from a sales background before this, I understood exactly what the profession should not look like: persuasion dressed up as advice, product recommendations shaped by what pays the adviser rather than what serves the client. Even in a well-regulated market like the UK, too much of the industry still optimises for the adviser's income first and performs client focus only where compliance requires it. I felt that gap early, and I have spent the rest of my career trying to close it in whatever practice I have been part of.
Burnout, and what it taught me
The economics of UK advice make this harder than it should be. To run a viable practice under UK regulatory and cost structures, most advisers need a client bank of 200 or more. Giving each of those clients the attention their situation actually deserves, at that volume, is close to impossible. By the later part of my UK career I had hit the wall that a lot of advisers in that market eventually hit: 80-hour weeks, long drives between meetings, and admin that ate every hour it was given. I had married, started a family, and bought a home during those years, and the job that was supposed to support that life was instead consuming all the time and energy that life needed.
The parts of the work I actually loved, sitting with a client and materially improving their position, had been buried under process and volume. It is a structural feature of the UK advice market as it currently operates, and it is one of the clearest reasons I ended up building something different rather than trying to fix it from inside.
Leaving, and starting again
In July 2021, coming out of the strangest period any of us have lived through, my family and I left the UK. We spent three months in Crete before settling in Thailand, where we have been since. I was fortunate that the same skills I had spent years teaching clients, patient investing, proper planning, not panicking, meant we had the financial footing to make that move without rushing straight back into work. The change in quality of life for all of us has been significant. Everyone in the family is healthier and happier for it.
After some time away from the industry, an opportunity came up to return to advice, and I took it expecting to find something similar to what I had left. I did not. The regulatory environment here is not the UK's, and the market I found myself in did not reflect the way I believed advice should be delivered: consultative, not persuasive, and built around outcomes rather than product sales. It didn't exist, so I built it.
The economics of UK advice make this harder than it should be. To run a viable practice under UK regulatory and cost structures, most advisers need a client bank of 200 or more. Giving each of those clients the attention their situation actually deserves, at that volume, is close to impossible. By the later part of my UK career I had hit the wall that a lot of advisers in that market eventually hit: 80-hour weeks, long drives between meetings, and admin that ate every hour it was given. I had married, started a family, and bought a home during those years, and the job that was supposed to support that life was instead consuming all the time and energy that life needed.
The parts of the work I actually loved, sitting with a client and materially improving their position, had been buried under process and volume. It is a structural feature of the UK advice market as it currently operates, and it is one of the clearest reasons I ended up building something different rather than trying to fix it from inside.
Leaving, and starting again
In July 2021, coming out of the strangest period any of us have lived through, my family and I left the UK. We spent three months in Crete before settling in Thailand, where we have been since. I was fortunate that the same skills I had spent years teaching clients, patient investing, proper planning, not panicking, meant we had the financial footing to make that move without rushing straight back into work. The change in quality of life for all of us has been significant. Everyone in the family is healthier and happier for it.
After some time away from the industry, an opportunity came up to return to advice, and I took it expecting to find something similar to what I had left. I did not. The regulatory environment here is not the UK's, and the market I found myself in did not reflect the way I believed advice should be delivered: consultative, not persuasive, and built around outcomes rather than product sales. It didn't exist, so I built it.
Building Brigantia
Brigantia - the land inhabited by the Brigantes, a British Celtic tribe which occupied the largest territory in ancient Britain. The territory of Brigantia covered what is now Blackpool, and the Fylde Coast.
Brigantia exists to do the job the way I always believed it should be done: fee-based rather than commission-chasing, capped fees rather than open-ended ones, a proper data-led approach to portfolio construction, and cashflow modelling and long-term planning done properly rather than as a box-ticking exercise. Good financial advice. Boring, reliable, and dependable, and that is precisely the point.
There is one more piece of this that I think matters. I am naturally wired toward the analytical and data-driven side of this work. Precision, structure and detail come easily to me in a way that the softer, relationship-facing parts of advice never have, and I have had to work harder at those over the years than most people do. I am also, for what it is worth, an identified ISTJ-T. In an industry full of people who are naturally good at selling, I think there is real value in being the adviser who is naturally good at the analysis instead. It is a harder way to build a client base. I think it is a much better way to look after one.
Everything in my background, the contrast I grew up around, the unconventional route into this career, the burnout I saw up close in the UK system, and the way my own mind works, has fed into how Brigantia operates today. I do not take for granted what it means for a client to hand their financial future to someone else. I do not think there is a firm in this industry that takes that responsibility more seriously than we do.
You can book an initial call below.
Brigantia - the land inhabited by the Brigantes, a British Celtic tribe which occupied the largest territory in ancient Britain. The territory of Brigantia covered what is now Blackpool, and the Fylde Coast.
Brigantia exists to do the job the way I always believed it should be done: fee-based rather than commission-chasing, capped fees rather than open-ended ones, a proper data-led approach to portfolio construction, and cashflow modelling and long-term planning done properly rather than as a box-ticking exercise. Good financial advice. Boring, reliable, and dependable, and that is precisely the point.
There is one more piece of this that I think matters. I am naturally wired toward the analytical and data-driven side of this work. Precision, structure and detail come easily to me in a way that the softer, relationship-facing parts of advice never have, and I have had to work harder at those over the years than most people do. I am also, for what it is worth, an identified ISTJ-T. In an industry full of people who are naturally good at selling, I think there is real value in being the adviser who is naturally good at the analysis instead. It is a harder way to build a client base. I think it is a much better way to look after one.
Everything in my background, the contrast I grew up around, the unconventional route into this career, the burnout I saw up close in the UK system, and the way my own mind works, has fed into how Brigantia operates today. I do not take for granted what it means for a client to hand their financial future to someone else. I do not think there is a firm in this industry that takes that responsibility more seriously than we do.
You can book an initial call below.
