Recently, Alliant Insurance Services launched its new business line, Retirement & Wealth at Alliant (RWA), aiming to address the growing convergence of retirement consulting and wealth management in the United States by linking institutional retirement plan relationships with individual wealth advisory services through affiliated entities.
RWA is to be led by 25-year industry veteran, Amit Dogra. Mosaic caught up with Amit to discuss RWA's offering to the US wealth management market and why he believes wealth management needs a whole-of-life approach.
What strategic gap or market opportunity did Alliant identify that led to the creation of a dedicated wealth management unit, and why is now the right time to make this move?
The industry is now laden with firms that are called aggregators or consolidators, or firms that are running a private equity agenda, being prepped for a sale. The timing was right for a firm that was going to be disruptive and stable at the same time. A company that was really focused on what the industry should be focused on – advisers, clients, and helping them grow.
Alliant is a large, established firm building a wealth business – not to sell it or satisfy an agenda, but to grow it and disrupt the wealth management space. Retirement and Wealth at Alliant (RWA) was built to give advisers peace of mind that they can be part of an independent firm, that’s not to looking to sell, but is looking to solve some of their largest needs. RWA has an organic growth/referral programme and company equity that has a history of providing its employees with liquidity opportunities. The industry has evolved and so has what advisers value and are looking for from a partner. We're solving a need in the marketplace.
How do you see the relationship between insurance, financial planning, and wealth management evolving over the next decade, and where does this new unit fit within that broader vision?
Everyone talks about the ‘Great Wealth Transfer’ but they don’t always talk about the convergence of retirement and wealth as a part of that conversation. When people talk about how to capture this opportunity, they usually talk about it through two Gs. One is gender: women are expected to inherit most of the wealth; the other is generational: which is that the younger generations, the millennials, will be the inheritors of the wealth.
But what most people don’t talk about, or are forgetting, is a third G: geography, or the location of the wealth. It’s estimated that about 50 percent or more of the assets set to transfer are in retirement plans. So, if that’s the case, then the question for wealth advisers becomes, “If you don’t have access to those retirement assets, or those clients, will you have a chance to capture those assets?”.
We are seeing large advisory firms acquiring retirement plan firms and large retirement plan firms establishing wealth management businesses. It’s clear that you have to have both retirement and wealth if you’re going to properly positioned for the transfer of wealth. These two things go hand-in-glove, and from a client’s perspective, they're more intersected than ever. So, if you’re not considering all three G’s – gender, generation, and geography – and if you’re not considering the evolving needs of clients from both an asset and liability perspective, then you’re not solving their life problems.
Clients’ needs transcend arbitrary industry definitions of products and services. Providing for their families and being prepared for what life presents them is the view we need to be taking. And that's why you need to be thinking about insurance, wealth planning, health, and wealth – all together as one.
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What client segments are you targeting initially, and what specific needs or frustrations do you believe are underserved by existing wealth management providers?
We're looking at serving the entire spectrum of wealth. We're talking about people who may be new in the workforce and need to set up a retirement account with their 401k provider, but don't know the first thing about it or investing. We want to serve them today and as they grow. So, we will start with those new to wealth management, all the way through to the ultrahigh net worth (UHNW).
Depending on the size of the opportunity, we'll service clients in the appropriate manner with the appropriate resources. So, we're excited to be able to serve the entire wealth landscape.
As you build the leadership team and wider organisation, what types of talent, experience, and cultural mindset are you prioritising?
An entrepreneurial mindset is key to what we're doing. We want people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and do what it takes. Alliant, by definition, is a flat organisation. There aren't layers of bureaucracy. It is also an organic growth-driven organisation and we're looking for people who have that same entrepreneurial mindset as we launch the business.
To what extent are you building the business organically, versus partnering with external providers across areas such as technology, investment management, custody, financial planning, or client servicing?
Organic growth, by partnering internally, is a huge part of the success at Alliant. We do that across all our business units. For advisers, what they'll be interested in is our ability to help them drive organic growth through a proprietary, internal lead-gen and referral system. In today's world, advisers who are looking for lead-gen and referral know it's one of the holy grails of our industry and they have to pay a significant amount to get access to it. We will be able to provide that in a proprietary way through lead-generation and referrals through our other lines of business. Advisers at RWA will not need to rely on third-party sources to generate leads or organic growth – and that is exciting to them.
With over 14,000 employees, servicing billions of dollars, and thousands and thousands of clients across multiple business lines, we have set up a referral lead-generation system that will power organic growth for advisers as a portion of what they do. We're super excited to be able to do that because it's one of the main areas of focus across the industry today; we've solved that need for advisers, so they don’t have to wait in line to gain access to a custodial program or pay thousands of dollars to a third-party lead provider circulating the same names to multiple advisers.
When it comes to technology and FinTech, we recognise that, while we're not a FinTech firm, we are FinTech consumers and we are going to leverage FinTech and artificial intelligence (AI) in all the ways that you would expect for advisers to run an efficient and effective business.
What have been the biggest operational or strategic challenges in building a wealth management capability inside a large insurance organisation, and how have you approached overcoming them?
Wealth may be new to Alliant because it's an insurance firm, but the appetite for growth, the appetite for long term success, are second to none. Alliant has a history of going into businesses new to it and being extremely successful. Wealth management will be no different. Our goal is to grow this into a US$100 million-revenue business as quickly as we can.
How are you thinking about the client proposition from day one – particularly around advice, investment capabilities, digital experience, pricing, and the balance between human and technology-enabled engagement?
Some of those things are table stakes at this point. What we're focused on is understanding what matters most to clients, and that’s what matters most to us. And when you think about that – it's family, it's health, it's the ever-evolving, changing needs in life, as your kids grow up, or the loss of a loved one. The industry has created these silos around the products they provide, but at Alliant we're not looking at things through wealth or retirement lenses, we're looking at them through the lens of a client's life needs.
When you look at it through that lens, you recognise that there's a lot of things that you need to do to serve these clients, that may be a little bit different than how we’ve looked at it before as a wealth management industry. We want to be focused on the client’s life needs – we're here, we're ready to serve.
In an increasingly crowded wealth marketplace, what do you believe will genuinely differentiate your offering from private banks, independent wealth managers, and other insurer-backed propositions?
Not only do we serve the entire spectrum of wealth, but we want to serve it with a comprehensive look at a client's life – from the asset management, the wealth management, and the liability management sides.
We want client advisers who are focused on the client's lives. That that's something we don't think many people are doing. As we start to look at the use of AI and other technologies, it seems like our industry is more focused on tools and services rather than solving client needs.
So what role does technology play in the build-out of the unit, and how are you approaching decisions around platform architecture, data, AI, and integration with the wider group infrastructure?
Everybody's racing towards the same point in this. You want to leverage AI where it makes sense. AI is not going to replace people or individual conversations – AI can't put its arm around a client and congratulate them or wish them condolences. But you do need the technology and the strategy. We have a history of being FinTech-forward and we'll continue to do that.
Looking ahead five years, what will success look like for your new unit — not only in terms of assets or growth, but also in terms of reputation, client impact, and strategic importance within the wider firm?
We're looking to be a national firm. We want the ability to serve clients in all the major metropolitan cities, secondary markets, and tertiary markets. We want to be able to serve not only the entire spectrum of wealth, but the entire marketplace as well. We want our reputation at RWA to be the same that Alliant's on the insurance side – which is an organically growth-oriented, highly entrepreneurial, flat organisation that values its clients and its advisers.
Mosaic is grateful to Amit Dogra, Managing Director & EVP, Head of Retirement & Wealth at Alliant, for contributing his insights to this report.
Discover Mosaic I
If you’ve enjoyed Mosaic II: Summer 2026 edition, don’t miss where the journey began. Mosaic I: Spring 2026 edition explores many of the themes that continue to shape today’s wealth management landscape – including the rise of private markets, the foundations of effective AI adoption, revenue management, client onboarding, and the evolution of digital advice.
Alongside exclusive executive interviews, contributor insights, company profiles, and technology showcases, Mosaic I offers wealth management professionals a curated, global view of the trends reshaping our industry. Read it today here.
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The Wealth Mosaic is a UK-headquartered online solution provider directory and knowledge resource, focused specifically on the wealth management industry.
For wealth managers, the buy side of our marketplace, The Wealth Mosaic is designed to enable discovery of key solutions, solution providers and knowledge resources by specific business needs.
For solution providers and vendors, the sell side of our marketplace, The Wealth Mosaic exists to support the positioning, exposure and business development needs of these firms in a more complex and demanding market.
