Coastal Advice Group ramping up M&A pipeline to triple revenue

Coastal Advice Group chief executive, Daniel Brown, has said the firm has no intention of slowing down, with plans to do as many as 15 acquisitions in the next 12 months.

After announcing the merger with Calder Wealth Management (CWM) earlier this week, Brown told Money Management the firm has more than a dozen acquisitions in the pipeline for the coming year.

It intends for these to help the firm triple its revenue within the next 18 months. 

According to Brown, the group has completed some 26 merger acquisitions since its inception in 2016. This includes Newcastle-based Folio Private Wealth in June 2023, RI Brighton in South Australia in December 2023, and Wealth for Life Financial Planning in January 2024, an Adelaide-based advice business.

In January 2025, it entered into a strategic long-term partnership with Merchant Wealth Partners to unlock growth and innovation opportunities, strengthen its ability to attract and retain talent, invest in new technologies, and foster a supportive workplace culture.

“I would say that we’re likely to do 10 to 15 acquisitions in the next 12 months, so we’re really ready and willing to continue the growth and fill in the locations we’ve got now and hopefully get one in Brisbane,” Brown said.

“Then we’ve got this national footprint, and our aspiration is to be one of the leading advice firms in Australia.”
The most recent merger with CWM will see the combined businesses have offices in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, with over 100 staff and oversee $2.5 billion in funds under management (FUM).

With plenty more deals in the pipeline, Brown said the business will be expanding its presence into Adelaide and surrounding regional areas over the coming months.

“We’ll be massive in Adelaide all of a sudden by the end of the year,” Brown said.

The next four months are set to be busy for CAG, with Brown explaining that the business has “seven or eight deals to do by the end of October lined up”.

Looking beyond the financial benefits of growing the business, the CEO said the recent growth has opened up the opportunity to introduce more of a “corporate structure” to the firm.

This means the business will be introducing new leadership roles while removing the need for team members to take on multiple responsibilities within the business, an occurrence that is particularly common among smaller businesses.

“We’re now starting to have dedicated managers. Advisers, we want them to focus on seeing clients, giving advice, and collecting revenue so we build the ecosystem and infrastructure around that.”

This shift not only removes excessive pressure from existing staff, Brown said, it also opens up the business to take on more young advisers, building up the team and supporting the next generation of advisers.

Brown said the desire to support staff also bleeds into the decision-making process of acquisitions, noting the importance of partnering with businesses that are the right “culture fit” for CAG.

“We want to make sure the vendor, the staff, our clients, their clients, are taken care of, and we achieve great outcomes in the future. There’s lots of lessons learnt so far,” he said.

“There’s an ageing population of financial advisers so, on one side, we want to make sure they’re known for getting great succession outcomes for those advisers and their clients. 

“Then on the other side, we want to be building and growing a junior adviser program and nurturing the next generation of talent.”

With such big aspirations for the business, Brown said the focus is more on sustainable growth through M&A and organic strategies rather than simply scale and revenue.

“It means investment in our own infrastructure, continued infrastructure, and AI and all that, and make sure we enable advisers to see more clients, and give more advice, and if we do a lot of things, I think we’re going to have a very successful future,” he said.