Merit Adds $900M Commonwealth Team, Sixth Since LPL Deal

Merit Financial Advisors has acquired The Bridgeway Group, a Southern California team with about $900 million in client assets, according to WealthManagement.com. Merit, based in Alpharetta, Ga., is a hybrid RIA overseeing $30.1 billion in client assets.

Bridgeway is a nine-person team with offices in Pasadena and Covina, Calif., led by partners Matt Dupon, Sean Montgomery and Scott Miller. Dupon and Montgomery will serve as wealth managers and partners at Merit; Miller will be area director, wealth manager and partner. The team spent roughly a dozen years at Commonwealth, according to BrokerCheck.

Merit has now added six Commonwealth teams since LPL acquired the network last year, representing about $4.7 billion in combined client assets. Merit, backed by Constellation Wealth Capital, has completed nine deals in 2026, WealthManagement.com reports.

The deal is part of a broader movement of Commonwealth teams into RIA firms as LPL Financial works to convert all Commonwealth advisors to its platform by the fourth quarter of this year, executives said on LPL's Q2 earnings call, per WealthManagement.com.

Merit has been active in competing for those team members against broker-dealers including Arkadios Capital, Cetera, Kestra Holdings and Raymond James, the outlet reports.

Merit's six Commonwealth acquisitions since last year, totaling $4.7 billion, suggest a deliberate strategy of absorbing teams from a network in transition. The $900 million Bridgeway addition fits that pattern, though WealthManagement.com does not specify targeting criteria.

The Q4 conversion deadline gives RIAs a finite window to recruit from Commonwealth's advisor base. With LPL saying it had more bandwidth to engage advisors, per WealthManagement.com, the competition for those teams is likely to remain active through the conversion.

LPL's Q4 conversion deadline is the next milestone to watch, according to the firm's executives.