Why I moved to Thailand, and built this practice

I came to Thailand for the same reasons many of my clients did, and I stayed because the work I wanted to do was needed here and was not being done well. The expat financial advice market in this part of the world has a reputation, and it is largely earned. I built the practice as a deliberate answer to that reputation rather than another example of it.

This is not a company with a sales floor. It is one advisor, working in person, across Thailand. That is a choice, and it shapes everything about how the work is set up.

Before I set up on my own, I saw the same pattern repeatedly: capable, sensible people who had been sold a product whose cost they never understood, by someone whose pay they never saw. The damage was rarely a single dramatic loss. It was the slow erosion of a retirement by layers of charges that nobody had ever set out on one page.

The conflict at the centre of that is structural, and I am not going to pretend it can be wished away. What can be changed is whether the client sees it. That single change, putting the cost and the pay on the table in writing before anyone decides, fixes most of what is wrong with how advice is sold here.

I meet clients in person, across the country, because the decisions involved, a pension, an estate, where to base a retirement, are not the kind you should make through a faceless process. They benefit from someone sitting across the table who will still be there next year and who you can hold to what was said.

One advisor means there is no one to hide behind. The advice you get is mine, the summary you receive is mine, and the answer to what a recommendation pays me is mine to give you in writing. A larger firm can offer more hands. It cannot offer that directness, and the directness is the point.

I am paid through commission on the products arranged and an ongoing fee on the assets I manage. I am not going to dress that up as something purer than it is. What I will do is show you every cost, and what each cost pays, in writing, before you decide anything. Your assets are held by an appointed trustee or a regulated platform, never by me.

That is the whole proposition, really. Not a claim to have removed every conflict, which would be untrue, but a commitment that you will see them. The first conversation is free, and the written summary afterwards is yours whether or not we go further.

This is a personal piece about why the practice exists and how it is structured. It is not financial advice.

If any of it resonates, the most useful next step is a conversation. Book a 30-minute consultation, or read how I am paid for the detail behind the principle.