This week’s Founder Friday, we sat down with Steven Cove and Mathew Walters of Pacific Wealth Partners, who walked away from scale to build something more personal, and more purposeful.
If your business is built purely around profit, it will struggle when things get hard. But if it’s built around solving a real problem for real people, that purpose becomes your anchor.
There is a version of financial advice that most Australians never get access to. The kind that is thoughtful, tailored, and feels less like a product and more like a conversation. Steven Cove and Mathew Walters spent years working inside institutions that were capable of delivering it. They just weren’t always set up to.
This week’s Founder Friday, Dynamic Business sat down with the co-directors of Pacific Wealth Partners to find out what drove two experienced financial services professionals to step away from the security of large institutions and build something entirely their own.
The answer, it turns out, came down to a shared frustration and a conviction that the industry could do better.
“We had all spent more than a decade working across financial planning and financial services,” Cove and Walters explained, “and we came together at a previous firm where we realised we were aligned in values and philosophy.”
That alignment sharpened into a clear sense of purpose when they looked honestly at how advice was being delivered across the industry. “At one end, traditional financial advice was largely reserved for higher-net-worth clients with larger balances and incomes. At the other, everyday Australians were being serviced, but often without the level of personalisation, care, or value that we felt they deserved, sometimes at fees that didn’t stack up for the client.”
It was a gap they couldn’t unsee. “We felt high-quality advice didn’t need to be exclusive,” they said. “The inspiration behind Pacific Wealth Partners was to deliver the best of both worlds: personalised, strategic advice, typically reserved for wealthier clients, made genuinely achievable for everyday Australians. Our goal was simple: to make working with a financial adviser feel accessible, worthwhile, and human.”
Cove brings nearly a decade of experience across boutique planning firms and Commonwealth Bank, where he worked across investment strategies, wealth protection, and retirement planning. Walters spent more than two decades in senior roles at NAB, Westpac, and the Royal Bank of Scotland in London, spanning corporate, institutional, and private banking. Together, they represent the kind of depth that is rarely found in a firm choosing to stay deliberately small.
Growth on their own terms
One of the most important choices we made early on was being very clear about who we exist to serve
Building Pacific Wealth Partners meant making some choices that ran against the grain of conventional advisory business thinking. Rather than chasing scale or targeting high-net-worth clients, the founders decided early on to be specific about who they were building for.
“One of the most important choices we made early on was being very clear about who we exist to serve,” they said. “Rather than chasing scale or prestige clients, we focused on individuals, families, and business owners who are often overlooked by the industry, people earning good incomes, building wealth steadily, and wanting clarity, not complexity.”
That clarity of purpose shaped how they invested in the business. The priorities were not new offices or headcount targets. Instead, they pointed to clear communication and education, building long-term relationships rather than transactional advice, systems and processes that improve the client experience, and a strong digital and content presence designed to build trust before a first meeting had even been scheduled.
“We’ve grown by being consistent, values-led, and focused on delivering advice that actually makes sense in real life,” they said.
Their approach to differentiation follows the same logic. Innovation, for Pacific Wealth Partners, is not about new products or technology for its own sake. It is about making complexity more navigable. “Our approach is grounded in plain English, transparency, and genuine care for each client’s circumstances, not just their balance sheet,” the founders explained. “Innovation for us isn’t about flashy products. It’s about making complex decisions easier to understand, using technology to enhance, not replace, human advice, and adapting strategies as clients’ lives evolve.”
Trust, built the slow way
Neither founder romanticises the difficulty of building a business in a heavily regulated industry. Financial services compliance demands are real, and the cost and time involved in doing things properly can slow growth in ways that test patience, particularly early on.
“One of the biggest lessons has been that doing things the right way takes longer, but lasts longer,” they said, reflecting on the challenges of the firm’s early years. “We’ve learned the importance of patience, consistency, and staying true to our values, even when growth might be slower in the early stages.”
The other lesson they return to is simpler, but perhaps harder to teach. “Trust is everything. You earn it through clarity, honesty, and showing up consistently, especially when things are uncertain.”
That emphasis on consistency is deliberate. In an industry where clients often feel like they are being handed between advisers or managed at arm’s length, Pacific Wealth Partners has built its model around the opposite: structured check-ins, regular reviews, and relationships that are designed to endure rather than simply transact.
Advice for anyone starting out
For founders in any industry weighing the decision to step out on their own, Cove and Walters offer counsel that reflects everything they have learned in building Pacific Wealth Partners.
“Be clear on why you’re doing it, and who you’re doing it for,” they said. “If your business is built purely around profit, it will struggle when things get hard. But if it’s built around solving a real problem for real people, that purpose becomes your anchor.”
And when it comes to the people you build with, they are equally direct. “Don’t underestimate the value of surrounding yourself with people who share your values and challenge your thinking. Pacific Wealth Partners exists because we built something together, not alone.”
In a financial services landscape increasingly defined by consolidation, automation, and institutional scale, that idea of building something together, and keeping it human, is both their point of difference and the reason they started in the first place.
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