The Business Bulletin
Spotllight on…
Spotlight on Neil Wattam Neil Wattam is a co-founder of WKM Wealth Limited. They’re an independent financial planning and investment management business launched in 2020. Set up by four friends with the intention of helping people with their personal wealth and hopefully helping them have a comfortable future.
How did you get into the finance
Capita in 2010, who are a big
so and we had our second child. After
world? And how did you end up
outsourcing firm. I'd been a chartered
paternity leave, I decided I'm off. I
setting up the business?
accountant working in big corporates
remember that summer of 2018 was
It’s quite a varied journey. I started off
for a long time, which was fine, but
a scorcher. I decided I was going to
generally quite stressful, quite hard. To
go all-in. I quit, took the summer off
a degree I enjoyed the treadmill that I
and did my exams with the Chartered
was on. Then one Christmas, I sat with
Insurance Institute; so I could
my brother in his house, and he was
undertake this regulated role.
in design back at university. I really enjoyed it, but can't draw, which is a bit of a problem! Having said that, I liked it and did well. I went to Boots in their purchasing department and then decided to become an accountant. I am a chartered accountant, having completed my ACA training in Hertfordshire with BDO, prior to joining Tesco, where I worked for five years or so. I joined
28 | Issue 17 – Finance
talking about the potential of starting something. And I thought how can I get involved? What can I do that this size of business needed? I really wanted to be a part of something like that, especially with my brother. Roll forward about 15 months or
Going back to study after a long time was challenging. My job for that summer, was to study. I passed those exams quite quickly, as it turned out, with a lot of hard work. Then went back to work, where I provided accounting consultancy roles for a bit,
