ACA Group (“ACA”) and Foreside Financial Group, LLC (“Foreside”), two of the leading providers of governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions to clients in the financial services industry, today announced the completion of its merger, to become one of the largest providers of tech-enabled GRC solutions globally. Foreside’s distribution business will be rebranded as ACA Foreside and will become a division under ACA. Genstar Capital (“Genstar”), a leading private equity firm, is the lead investor in the combined business. ACA’s current CEO Shvetank Shah will be the combined entity’s CEO.

The combination of ACA and Foreside will bring together the industry’s most experienced professionals to provide a full suite of GRC advisory, technology, managed services, analytics, distribution, and outsourcing solutions to the financial services industry. At the completion of the merger, the firm will have over 1,250 employees and 18 offices globally and will serve over 6,300 clients.

“Clients are looking for a comprehensive, one-stop solution for their GRC needs and we are thrilled to step up to the plate together to make GRC a competitive advantage for our clients,” said Shvetank Shah, CEO of ACA. “Foreside and ACA have earned outstanding reputations and our aligned vision and culture, client-centric focus, and commitment to innovation will help our customers navigate their most complex GRC challenges.”

Combining ACA’s award-winning technology, regulatory compliance, cybersecurity, ESG, and performance capabilities with Foreside’s distribution and broker-dealer capabilities creates the industry-leading end-to-end GRC platform financial services companies need to achieve superior growth in a compliant way.

“Together we will create an industry leader that meets client needs today and can adapt to changing needs in the future through state-of-the-art product innovation,” said David Whitaker, former President of Foreside, and now Global Services Leader, ACA. “The combination of ACA and Foreside will bring more diverse and robust offerings, and our platform architecture will offer leading financial firms the widest scope and acumen of services and technology to meet their regulatory requirements.”

Tony Salewski, Managing Director at Genstar and Sid Ramakrishnan, Director at Genstar, commented: “The combined business is a disrupter in the financial services GRC space, offering end-to-end regulatory advisory, benchmarking, managed services, technology platforms and the power of an unmatched network all under one roof. We are excited to partner with an exceptional management team who will lead the company on the next chapter of growth while continuing to focus on delivering exceptional service to clients.”

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.