Some highlights are below:

The Brevan Howard platform, which was spun off in 2018, is similar to the pioneering Aladdin software that BlackRock Inc developed. The unit, called Coremont LLP, has grown to service more than $50 billion in assets for mainly alternative money managers trading everything from stocks and bonds to cryptocurrencies, Jev Mehmet, its chief executive officer, said in an interview.

When Mehmet formalized the idea in 2017 of externalizing the platform and persuaded Howard to spin off the service, he found it wasn’t a tough sell.

“I identified that our platform, driven by our proprietary analytics, was our crown jewel and Alan did not take much persuading at all about the merits of going forward with this,” Mehmet said.

Others are signing up. Coremont added eight new clients over the Covid lockdown period, taking the total number to 17. Headcount has doubled to more than 200 people and the firm is in advanced conversations with traditional asset managers, sovereign wealth funds and sell side institutions to turn them into clients, Mehmet said.

The firm is building out its cryptocurrency offerings in collaboration with Elwood Asset Management, an affiliate firm. It’s also working with SIG Technologies, a quant trading platform spun off from Brevan Howard, to allow clients research, back-test and automate execution.

Coremont’s success coincides with rising pressure on fees and mounting costs for the hedge fund industry. That has in turn led money managers to outsource their non-core functions to external firms.

“The industry right now, because of cost pressures, is more disposed to outsourcing than it has been at any point in my career,” Mehmet said.