Merit Acquires $900M Commonwealth Team
Merit Financial Advisors, an Alpharetta, Ga.-based hybrid registered investment advisor overseeing $30.1 billion in client assets, has added another former Commonwealth Financial Network team since the LPL Financial acquisition, with a Southern California firm overseeing about $900 million in client assets.
The Bridgeway Group is a nine-person team with offices in Pasadena and Covina, Calif., and is led by partners Matt Dupon, Sean Montgomery and Scott Miller. Dupon and Montgomery will be wealth managers and partners at Merit, while Miller will become area director, wealth manager and partner.
“Bridgeway brings together many of the qualities we look for in a partner: a deeply client-centric culture, a strong financial planning orientation, an experienced multi-generational team and a genuine desire to continue growing,” David Wahlen, executive vice president/strategic partners of Merit, said in a statement.
The Bridgeway team had been with Commonwealth for about a dozen years, according to BrokerCheck, and has focused on financial planning and investment management, with a particular emphasis on retirement planning.
They are now Merit’s sixth team to join since LPL acquired Commonwealth last year, with firms representing about $4.7 billion in combined client assets.
“We knew we were going to make a transition, so it made sense to step back and ask where we wanted to go from here,” Dupon said in a statement. “We have built a strong business and want to keep growing, but continuing at this pace requires greater infrastructure and support.”
Merit, which is backed by Constellation Wealth Capital, had penned nine deals in 2026 as it seeks to keep expanding nationally. It has also been active among RIAs in competing for Commonwealth team members against other broker/dealers such as Arkadios Capital, Cetera, Kestra Holdings and Raymond James, in addition to some teams breaking off to start their own firms.
LPL is on track to convert all Commonwealth advisors to its platform by the fourth quarter of this year, according to executives speaking during the San Diego-based broker/dealer’s second-quarter earnings call.
With that conversion teed up, CEO Rich Steinmeier said that LPL had more bandwidth to engage with and recruit advisors, further bolstering its own client and asset base. In the second quarter, LPL said it booked $25 billion in recruited assets, up 35% from a year ago and about 47% sequentially.
The firm has retained Commonwealth assets in the mid-80% range and expects to reach its target retention of 90% of client assets.
