People often think that finance is about money, but it’s not, it’s about people. In fact, the whole story about how Sutton started is about people, or rather a person, a very important person.

I set Sutton up in 2026 after a ten-year career working for others. I decided that the time was right to start delivering a service that had my own unique stamp on it.

Sure, Sutton is named after myself, but it’s also a name that’s synonymous with Plymouth as a city, which is where we’re based. In fact, part of Plymouth was originally called ‘South Town’ which became ‘Sutton’ over time and the name is still used today as one of the three Parliamentary seats in the city which is called Plymouth Sutton and Devonport.

But this only explains why we’re called Sutton, it doesn’t explain why we started offering what we do. That’s a very different story and it’s one that is inextricably linked to my grandad Ken, and it’s fair to say that this has become a very personal mission for me in this specific industry.

My grandad worked all of his life and during that time duly paid into a pension pot that he believed would help support his family in later life. For the last ten years of his life, he fought cancer but wasn’t offered an enhanced annuity when he sought advice in 2015.

When he passed away in 2019 my nan received just £74 a month from a pension that was actually worth £75,000. For her to see the true value of that pension she would need to live for more than 80 years and as a result is now reliant on a state pension even though my grandad worked incredibly hard to build that private pension pot.

This, very personal story, makes me determined to make sure that no one else becomes financially vulnerable following poor financial advice. It drives me on every single day when I start work and it defines how I operate with my clients and the advice that I give them. This attitude runs through Sutton as a business and it always will do.

Good advice from people like us at Sutton can make the difference between financial security and financial vulnerability. Making the most of every investment is what we do best and at the heart of every bit of advice is the simple mantra: ‘it’s not about money, it’s about people’.

If you would like to talk to someone in the Sutton team about how we can help you and your family, then please drop us an email. We’d be more than happy to arrange a face-to-face meeting and we’ll even buy you a coffee.