MWA Financial has made a double acquisition with the purchases of Sterling Financial Consultants, based in Tower Hamlets, London, and The Financial Advice Centre (FAC), based in Cornwall.

The deals comes after MWA received an injection of funding from ThinCats to support its ambitious external growth via acquisitions strategy. With the financial backing, MWA hopes to grow its assets under advice to over the £1bn mark in the next year and a half.

The double acquisition brings MWA’s total of deals to five. The firm now has bases in Essex, Oxfordshire, Hertfordshire, Hampshire, London, Cornwall and the Scottish borders.

MWA, the owner-managed firm, was founded by Campbell Banks in 2016. Mr Banks, who was born in Australia, looks to export the Australian model of holistic financial advice to the UK.

Mr Banks commented: “The acquisition of Sterling and FAC is another significant milestone for MWA as we begin to make use of the funds being made available to us through our partnership with ThinCats.

“With a number of other live acquisitions already in play our immediate aim is to continue to increase our footprint across the UK, taking adviser numbers to over 30 and assets under administration to above £1bn.”

MWA Financial executive chairman Ed Rosengarten added: “We have set out our stall as an acquirer and integrator of high-quality regional IFAs and the acquisitions of Sterling and FAC is another great example of that.

“What we have bought are first-class regional businesses with a high-quality offering and hugely impressive client list.

“Sterling and FAC clients will continue to receive their usual high levels of service with the additional benefit of the wider range of tools and scale that being a part of MWA can offer.”

FAC’s Andrew Harvey said: “The deal with MWA does everything we were looking for in a deal and more.

“While our clients will continue to benefit from the first-class quality independent financial advice they have come to expect, it will also enable a number of the team to start thinking about their retirement over the next couple of years.”

Gunner & Co. specialise in IFA sales, IFA business sales, retiring IFAs and IFA client bank sales

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