ICS secures mandate for UK specialist fund manager

Investment Control Systems (ICS) has been selected to provide strategic investment data management and analytics solution for a UK specialist fund manager via its ATHENA platform.

ICS will implement ATHENA to consolidate Impax Asset Management's core investment data domains into a centralised, auditable hub, to unify positions, transactions, sustainability data, pricing, and reference data across Impax's data provider landscape.

The implementation will enable Impax to automate data management across custodians, OMS, and market data providers, while further reducing the operational risk to support scalable growth across its investments with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) on insights that "were previously out of reach".

Impax will also benefit from enhanced monitoring of data licence cost and governance controls from the mandate.

The move reflects a deliberate investment in infrastructure that ensures data quality, governance, and analytical capability scale with the firm's ambitions, ICS said.

Beyond the core data platform, Impax will gain access to ATHENA MCP, which enables investment and operations teams to query their live, governed data in plain language, with every interaction logged, traceable, and read-only, it explained.

Commenting, Impax Asset Management global chief operating officer Darren Johnson said the platform will continue to steer growth for the company moving forward.

"As we continue to grow and deepen our offering, having a modern, governed data platform is essential - both to the quality of our investment process and to the service we deliver to clients. ATHENA gives us the infrastructure to further strengthen our data capabilities, automate controls, and deliver the transparent, well-governed analytics our teams and clients expect," Johnson said.

"Critically, it also gives us a foundation to begin using AI more meaningfully - in a way that is governed, auditable, and genuinely connected to our real data. We look forward to building a long-term partnership with ICS."

Meanwhile, ICS chief commercial officer Christian Eriksen added: "We are delighted to welcome Impax Asset Management to the ICS client community."

"Impax is exactly the kind of firm ATHENA is designed for - operationally sophisticated, data-intensive, and operating at the intersection of investment excellence and sustainability leadership. The data unification work will further strengthen an already capable operation.

"But what excites us equally is what comes next: Impax will have a governed data foundation that their AI tools can trust more fully. That is the difference between AI as a demonstration and AI as a capability."

Impax joins a growing community of investment managers across the UK and globally accessing ATHENA, including local institutional investors like Active Super before the merger with Vision Super that took place in March 2025.