{"id":412661,"date":"2026-01-14T16:25:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T16:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/412661\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T16:25:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T16:25:11","slug":"we-talk-a-lot-about-mental-health-but-financial-health-is-huge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/412661\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We talk a lot about mental health, but financial health is huge\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michelle Pearce-Burke has been praised for helping families to feel safe taking their children out this Halloween, through the Trick or Treat interactive map she designed in 2024. It highlights the properties that will welcome trick or treaters. Over 120,000 houses across the UK \u2013 and beyond \u2013 registered to use the site this spooky season.<\/p>\n

It was not the first time that one of Michelle\u2019s innovative ideas took off. <\/p>\n

After studying medicine in Edinburgh, Michelle returned home to Guernsey, ready to change career paths, and found her passion in financial services. Beginning at a small, boutique stockbrokers, she progressed to Brooks Macdonald, and developed her skills through qualifications and local experience. After finding fault with the system, she decided to quit the firm and build a more approachable option for customers \u2013 a revolutionary website, named Wealthify.<\/p>\n

\u2018By nature, I always look for problems to solutions that I think others don\u2019t always see,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

\u2018And I felt the traditional world of asset management at the time was very paper-based and clunky. The technology that the rest of the world was adopting was just very slow to come to wealth management. That was coupled with the feeling that the industry was seen as \u201cfor the preserve of the elite and wealthy\u201d \u2013 when actually, there were people like me and my friends who could have really benefited from that kind of help with our money.\u2019<\/p>\n

At the time, she said the only solutions she could find for those without thousands of pounds to invest, was DIY investing \u2013 which requires significant knowledge on stocks and shares.<\/p>\n

\u2018Investing is not as hard as people make out,\u2019 she said. <\/p>\n

\u2018I think the industry uses a lot of jargon and smoke and mirrors to protect itself \u2013 so they can charge these high fees. But if you actually strip it back, stick to some basic principles, it doesn\u2019t have to be difficult.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Channel Islands launch of Wealthify in 2016. Left to right, co-founders Richard Theo, Michelle Pearce and Richard Avery-Wright \/ Guernsey Press<\/p>\n

Wealthify was designed to be a user-friendly and simple service \u2013 \u2018for the many, not the few\u2019 \u2013 teaching safe, sensible, low-cost investing. It was the first asset manager to let people invest from just one pound, and its percentage-based fees ensured no hefty, surprise bills down the line. Michelle realised she would have to digitise the site, to make it cost-effective and streamlined for the mass market. Using technology, she was also able to deliver a smarter system, that people could access from their phone.<\/p>\n

It remains the only digital service that Channel Islanders can access.<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u2019re not trying to pull the wool over your eyes,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

\u2018We explain investing \u2013 educate you, rather than parent you. A lot of the relationships people have with wealth management is that parent\/child dynamic. I wanted Wealthify to be more like a guidance, with you in control. If a customer then felt confident enough to try some DIY investing, we would see that as an evolution of the company \u2013 a sign that we had done a good job.\u2019<\/p>\n

Wealthify was second of its kind to market in the UK, with Nutmeg \u2013 which will soon lose its name to JP Morgan Personal Investing \u2013 as the first.<\/p>\n

\u2018I always looked at Nutmeg and thought \u201cIt\u2019s not as good as it could be\u201d,\u2019 said Michelle.<\/p>\n

\u2018It still felt quite inaccessible. I wanted to take it to another level and offer a very simple solution. I\u2019m not technical, but I\u2019m good at piecing things together, and I loved that early stage of the company, building it. When it\u2019s a small team working together, it\u2019s exciting and you\u2019re able to get things done really quickly. I also think it was a big advantage being so young \u2013 I didn\u2019t have much to lose, I was super flexible going on business trips and working all hours, it was the perfect time to take on that risk. Although maybe I lacked some experience \u2013 and there was definitely judgment around that \u2013 I think I proved people wrong.\u2019<\/p>\n

Michelle said the biggest questions she would get asked at the time were concerning her experience as a woman in the industry. But she found it was ageism, not sexism, that posed more of an issue.<\/p>\n

\u2018I would go into meetings and before making introductions, the body language spoke \u2013 people would position themselves to speak to the \u201cadults\u201d in the room,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

\u2018But I kind of liked it. It motivated me. When you\u2019re young, you\u2019re more likely to challenge things and want to shake things up.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"MichelleMichelle said the biggest questions she would get asked at the time were concerning her experience as a woman in the industry. But she found it was ageism, not sexism, that posed more of an issue \/ Picture supplied<\/p>\n

After going live in 2016, the following five years saw a wave of copycat models launch. Michelle said that most, eventually, died away \u2013 but Wealthify still remains, now under the ownership of the UK\u2019s leading diversified insurer \u2013 Aviva.<\/p>\n

Aviva first invested just two years after it launched, taking a majority stake.<\/p>\n

\u2018That was huge for us,\u2019 said Michelle.<\/p>\n

\u2018It gave us funding that we desperately needed, access to their customer base and credibility. With that big backing, it unlocked the next stage of growth.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Word soon spread and Michelle said the positive feedback came flooding in. <\/p>\n

\u2018We talk a lot about mental health, but financial health is huge,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

\u2018When you feel confident in your finances, it can enormously help your mental health and your life in general. I heard multiple stories from people who just didn\u2019t have a clue what to do with their money, who\u2019d spent a lot of their life getting ripped off by IFAs and their money was in a mess \u2013 in all different places. Helping them to bring it all together under one roof and feel in control of it again definitely makes a huge difference. I think money can buy you happiness \u2013 you can\u2019t say that, right? \u2013 but it does. It also buys you your time back, and that definitely brings happiness. One of my biggest joys is hearing how I\u2019ve helped people to do that.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"MichelleMichelle added that she would also like to see financial literacy and education taught in school \/ Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Aviva acquired Wealthify fully in 2020, a week before Michelle gave birth to her first baby.<\/p>\n

\u2018It was a weird time for the world, because it was right in the middle of Covid, and for me personally,\u2019 she said. <\/p>\n

\u2018I moved back to Guernsey and was on maternity leave. I\u2019ve now been on and off maternity leave with subsequently another two babies. So I went from being super hands-on in the company, to doing much more contained roles.\u2019<\/p>\n

Now with Trick or Treat, and three girls aged five and under, Michelle has her hands full and is no longer a part of Wealthify, but said she keeps an eye on the company\u2019s performance and is pleased to see it doing well.<\/p>\n

\u2018My money is still all in Wealthify,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m happy with the direction, though I think it\u2019s gone in a different direction than it would have if I was still there. I probably would\u2019ve been steering it towards my crazy ideas \u2013 with new directions and experimentation \u2013 but now it\u2019s more focused on maturing as an organisation and becoming a stable part of the Aviva group.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Michelle said she has considered getting back into finance, potentially by helping start-ups. <\/p>\n

When asked what message she would give to young islanders looking to break the mould with their bright ideas, she said \u2018just do it\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018And my advice, financially, would always be to save,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Invest it. Put it aside. Build a safety net. In the world we live in, I know that\u2019s hard to do \u2013 everyone\u2019s trying to steal a bit with pointless products constantly advertised on our phones. It\u2019s so easy to get sucked into that pit, but try and build healthy habits. Even \u00a35 a month can start to accrue quickly. You never know what life might throw at you, so having that emergency savings pot is crucial. The great thing about a phone is, there\u2019s always ways to earn money. Think outside the box and use technology positively. Maximise your time, to earn efficiently. Even at a young age, I\u2019d be encouraging people to build a passive income \u2013 you don\u2019t have to be physically at your job to be making money.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"MichelleMichelle with her one-year-old daughter Zetta. Michelle designed the Trick or Treat interactive map to give people information on which households accept people knocking on Halloween \/ Sophie Rabey\/Guernsey Press<\/p>\n

Looking to the future, Michelle said she is curious to see how AI might play a role in the finance industry.<\/p>\n

\u2018People are having deeply personal conversations with AI that they wouldn\u2019t have with even their friends or family,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

\u2018It seems logical to me, then, that they would trust it with their money. I think it\u2019s bubbling under the surface and it\u2019s going be huge in the next decade \u2013 that intersection between AI and advice.\u2019<\/p>\n

Michelle added that she would also like to see financial literacy and education taught in school.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ve realised how poor that knowledge is in society and I think that\u2019s something in Guernsey, that maybe we\u2019ve got room to change,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

\u2018As a financial services hub, with so much talent on the island, I guess that\u2019s an opportunity I would call out. There could be a great pioneering programme in Guernsey that could then roll out to the wider society.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michelle Pearce-Burke has been praised for helping families to feel safe taking their children out this Halloween, through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64,63,137,514,515],"class_list":{"0":"post-412661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}