Wealth planning is often reduced to a menu of financial products: an investment portfolio, an insurance policy, a tax strategy, a trust or an estate document. Each of them matters. Yet none can do enough on its own when the client’s life, family, business and legacy are all connected.

For Matthew Aston and James Hughes, founding partners of Lighthouse Private Wealth based in Peterborough, Ontario, that disconnect is the reason wealth advice must stop treating each decision as a standalone answer and start asking how it serves the whole.

“What we see in wealth planning is that the consumer is often being sold in pieces instead of really being counseled,” he says. “We are here to change that.”

Lighthouse Private Wealth was founded by Matthew Aston and James Hughesto bring those pieces into one disciplined planning process.

For high-net-worth families, retirees, business owners, trusts, corporations and Indigenous First Nation communities, every financial decision carries a second-order effect. Retirement income reshapes tax exposure. Tax structure influences estate value. Corporate planning affects succession. Insurance protects against risks an investment portfolio cannot absorb. Family dynamics determine how wealth should move, when it should move and what protections need to follow it.

Rather than asking clients to gather advice from different corners and hold the strategy together themselves, Lighthouse Private Wealth begins at the ground level. Cash flow, income, assets, liabilities, business interests, family structure, risk exposure and long-term goals are examined before recommendations take shape. The purpose is not to move quickly toward a product, but to understand what the wealth is meant to support before deciding how to structure it.

From there, the firm coordinates the wider advisory team. Accountants are brought in for deeper tax details. Lawyers are engaged when trusts, corporations, wills or estate structures require review. Lighthouse Private Wealth remains closely involved in the conversation, testing each recommendation against the client’s broader strategy before execution.

“We want clients going into those decisions with peace of mind,” says Aston. “They know every professional involved has weighed in and confirmed that the structure aligns with the overall strategy.”

For Lighthouse Private Wealth, planning is not the act of assembling services around wealth. It is the discipline of understanding the life, family, business and community responsibilities attached to it, then ensuring every decision works in service of that larger purpose.

Planning Around People, Not Just Portfolios

Financial planning at Lighthouse Private Wealth frequently expands into conversations many clients have never previously had with advisors.

Some discussions focus on how generational wealth may eventually be passed down to children or grandchildren. Others involve long-term considerations, such as family businesses, succession planning or whether future heirs are fully prepared to manage significant wealth independently. In some situations, conversations may include developmental challenges, addiction-related concerns, marital stability or creditor exposure.

“We really dive deep to understand the personal side of it,” says Aston.

The objective is not to control how future generations live or make decisions. The focus instead centers on helping families think carefully about how wealth structures may continue supporting future generations while preserving flexibility and appropriate protections along the way.

For some families, that may involve trust structures designed to protect inheritances during a marital breakdown or from future creditor exposure. Other situations may require more advanced planning around incorporated businesses, tax-efficient wealth transfers or succession strategies involving multiple generations within the same family.

Aston and Hughes believe the same long-term thinking also applies beyond individual families.

Lighthouse Private Wealth works alongside Indigenous First Nation communities on strategic planning, investment governance and capital management initiatives tied to broader economic and community priorities. Those partnerships begin with understanding leadership goals, long-term development objectives and the outcomes communities are working toward before investment structures are designed around them.

Financial literacy and capital stewardship also remain part of the process as communities continue strengthening economic opportunities for future generations.

Whether working with families or communities, Aston and Hughes believe meaningful planning requires relationships that extend beyond transactional advisory conversations.

“I would say our working relationships become like family members,” says Aston. “We genuinely care about the people that we work with.”

Rethinking Modern Portfolio Theory

Lighthouse Private Wealth’s long-term planning philosophy carries directly into how the firm approaches investment management.

Following the market disruptions of 2018 and 2022, Lighthouse began reassessing many of the assumptions underlying traditional portfolio construction. Historically, balanced portfolios relied heavily on the inverse relationship between equities and fixed income to help stabilize returns during periods of volatility. Recent interest-rate shocks, however, placed pressure on both asset classes simultaneously, exposing vulnerabilities in conventional 60/40 portfolio structures.

For Matthew Aston and his team, those market conditions raised a larger question: if the market environment had fundamentally changed, should portfolio construction evolve with it?

Rather than treating those disruptions as temporary anomalies, Lighthouse Private Wealth undertook a six-month independent research process to reevaluate how portfolios could be structured for modern market conditions. The result was the development of three proprietary model portfolios designed to improve downside protection during both interest-rate and growth shocks while still maintaining long-term growth potential.

The portfolios incorporate a broader mix of strategies, including liquid alternatives, relative-value approaches, long-short structures and currency-focused positioning intended to create more resilient portfolio behavior during periods of market stress.

“We looked at how the world has changed,” adds Aston. “The environment that modern portfolio theory was originally built around simply doesn’t exist in the same way anymore.”

Lighthouse Private Wealth later brought in multiple Chartered Financial Analyst teams from outside organizations to independently review and test the framework across different market conditions. According to Aston, the portfolios demonstrated strong downside protection during the 2022 market disruption while continuing to generate meaningful long-term compounded growth.

Structuring Wealth for Long-Term Family Impact

One client engagement illustrates how Lighthouse approaches planning holistically. A retired widow was referred to the firm after becoming increasingly concerned about the tax inefficiencies surrounding her investment structure. Her portfolio relied heavily on dividend income, which pushed her taxable income high enough to trigger significant claw-backs of Old Age Security benefits while simultaneously increasing her overall tax burden.

“She felt like she was paying too much tax and losing too many benefits,” says Aston.

After reviewing the full structure, Lighthouse redesigned the portfolio using more tax-efficient investment vehicles. The restructuring allowed the client to recover her Old Age Security benefits while improving the overall efficiency of the portfolio itself.

The engagement then expanded into broader intergenerational planning. Working alongside the client’s accountant and legal counsel, Lighthouse helped establish estate structures designed to protect future inheritance transfers from creditor exposure, lawsuits and marital breakdown risk while also improving long-term tax efficiency for the next generation.

Preserving the Human Side of Advisory

Technology continues to reshape the financial services industry, particularly in areas involving data analytics, forecasting and portfolio modeling. Lighthouse Private Wealth incorporates technology throughout its planning process, including stress testing, Monte Carlo analysis and portfolio scenario modeling.

At the same time, the firm has intentionally maintained a relationship-driven advisory culture.

“We’re still very people-driven,” adds Aston. “Technology is really being used to assist our team members, not to replace the human side of the process.”

That philosophy reflects the broader identity of the organization. Lighthouse is not attempting to position itself as a technology-first advisory platform or an automated investment solution. The firm continues to operate through direct relationships, deep planning conversations and long-term strategic coordination.

As Lighthouse Private Wealth prepares for its next stage of growth, that philosophy remains unchanged. Lighthouse recently secured a new office location within Peterborough’s historic Burnham Mansion, a property originally built in the 1800s. The building’s history and permanence align naturally with the firm’s long-term perspective and emphasis on continuity across generations. It is also expanding its advisory and planning team while continuing to deepen the planning relationships that define its client experience.

For Aston and Hughes, wealth management ultimately revolves around helping people make thoughtful decisions about the future they are trying to protect, whether for their families, their organizations or the generations that follow them.

Recognition as the Top Wealth Management Solutions in Canada for 2026 by Financial Services Review reflects Lighthouse Private Wealth’s continued focus on long-term relationships and planning strategies designed around the people connected to the wealth itself.