The Investment Association
The Investment Association, known as the IA, is the trade body and industry voice for investment managers in the United Kingdom. Its full members range from small independent UK firms to Europe-wide and global asset managers that invest money for pension schemes, insurers and private savers. The IA represents these firms to policymakers and regulators in the UK, across Europe and beyond.
The IA works on the rules for funds and pensions, publishes yearly data on the industry and runs the IA sectors, which savers and advisers use to compare funds. It trains staff of member firms in regulation and compliance and runs Engine, a fintech hub and accelerator for startups that build tools for investment managers. The UK investment management industry is the largest in Europe and the second largest in the world after the United States.
Members and membership categories
The IA has four membership categories: full members, affiliate members, sector members and fintech members. At the end of 2025 the IA counted 196 full members, 92 affiliate members, 61 sector members and 98 fintech members. Full members are the investment managers themselves, from boutique firms to Schroders, Vanguard and State Street, while affiliates include law firms, depositaries and fund platforms such as Allfunds.
Private markets firms were a main source of membership growth in 2025, and Apollo Global, KKR, Partners Group and HarbourVest joined that year. In the member survey of the same year, 93 percent of respondents said they were highly likely to recommend the IA.
CEO, chair and board
John Owen has been chief executive of the IA since 1 July 2026 and succeeded Chris Cummings, who had led the association since September 2016. John Owen spent twenty years in the UK civil service and was Director for Financial Services at HM Treasury from 2022 to 2025. Before he joined the IA, he was a partner in the financial services risk consulting practice of EY.
Ann Prendergast, Executive Vice President and Head of EMEA at State Street Investment Management, chairs the board and succeeded Patrick Thomson of J.P. Morgan Asset Management. Joseph Pinto of M&G Investments and Mark Versey of Aviva Investors are deputy chairs, and the board also includes senior leaders of BlackRock, Schroders, Fidelity International, Vanguard Europe and DWS Group.
IA sectors for comparing funds
The IA sectors divide the large universe of UK funds into smaller groups, so that investors and advisers can compare the performance and charges of similar funds. There are 56 IA sectors, and some offshore EU funds are included alongside the UK funds. Funds are split broadly into income and capital growth and then grouped by the asset type, region or industry they invest in, while outcome-focused sectors such as Targeted Absolute Return stand apart.
A Sectors Committee oversees the sectors, and an independent monitoring company checks every month whether funds still meet their sector definition. The IA can remove a fund that breaks the rules, and after a public consultation in 2025 it changed the property and healthcare sectors with effect from 1 June 2026.
Upcoming finance and fintech events in Europe
Investment Management Survey and annual report
Every year the IA publishes its Investment Management Survey, and the 2025-2026 edition appeared under the title Investment Management in the UK. Assets under management in the UK industry rose by 11 percent to a record £11.1 trillion at the end of 2025. Of that total, 53 percent or £5.9 trillion was managed for clients outside the UK, compared with 37 percent in 2016.
The survey also shows that IA members managed £4.4 trillion for UK institutional clients at the end of 2025, and pension schemes accounted for £2.2 trillion of these mandates. Next to the survey, the IA publishes an annual report with its accounts and member lists, plus reports on stewardship and on the demographics of the workforce in the industry.
Annual Conference, events and training
The IA held 48 events in 2025, from conferences and CEO dinners to webinars, forums and roundtables, with more than 5,500 registrations in total. The Annual Conference passed 800 registrations that year, and the Annual Dinner at the Guildhall in London welcomed 450 guests from 60 member firms. The IA also runs a conference in Scotland and added a Private Markets Summit and a Fund Symposium to its program in 2025.
The training team of the IA offers more than 65 courses on regulation and compliance, as open sessions and in-house sessions for member firms. Academies on AI and on tokenization sit next to IA Learning, an e-learning platform with CPD accreditation that staff can work through in modules.
Fund tokenization, IF3 Lab and Engine
Fund tokenization has been a core technology topic for the IA and for the Investment Management Taskforce of HM Treasury. In October 2025 the FCA proposed new rules for fund tokenization and for direct dealing with funds, a model that the IA had put forward under the name Direct2Fund. In the IF3 Lab of the IA, firms and regulators develop practical solutions for tokenized funds, digital money infrastructure and new operating models.
Engine is the fintech hub and accelerator of the IA and has supported more than 50 startups since its launch. In 2025 it added 27 fintech members and ran its Innovator program and the pre-seed initiative SPARKS. At the end of that year Engine had memoranda of understanding with 16 financial centers, among them Singapore, Hong Kong, Luxembourg and Switzerland.
History since the Investment Management Association
Until the start of 2015 the IA was called the Investment Management Association. In 2014 it merged with the investment affairs division of the Association of British Insurers, and in January 2015 the association renamed itself The Investment Association to reflect the wider remit. Daniel Godfrey, chief executive at the time, said that the name of the association had changed but its purpose had not.
Address in London
The IA has its office at 10 Norton Folgate in London E1 6DB, and the same address is the registered office of the company. The Investment Association is a company limited by guarantee and is registered at Companies House under the number 04343737.
The Investment Association and Finance Loop
Asset managers in Frankfurt and London work on the same questions as the members of the IA, from fund tokenization and direct dealing with funds to the use of AI in investment management. Finance Loop discusses these questions at its events and in its Investment & Digital Assets track.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the institutional use of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.