FRM began as a London-based hedge fund research firm in the early 1990s. We were founded by Blaine Tomlinson based on his observation that hedge funds were producing better risk-adjusted returns than long-only managers. In 1997, we began investing in hedge funds on behalf of clients through creating and managing fund of fund portfolios.

At a time when little was known about the industry, we were one of the first firms to conduct comprehensive institutional quality research and apply advanced analytics to understand hedge funds. We assembled one of the most sophisticated and complete databases of qualitative and quantitative information on hedge funds and created one of the industry's first classification systems.

This work led to several groundbreaking insights. We saw that hedge funds were actually much more sophisticated than people thought. The best hedge funds were carrying out sophisticated investment strategies and actively managing downside risk – producing high quality returns with low correlation to traditional assets. Given these attractive return profiles, we firmly believed that more investors should allocate to hedge funds.

Importantly, our research demonstrated that portfolio driven approaches to hedge fund investing increased the quality of risk adjusted returns versus investing in a limited number of individual hedge funds. Further, they enabled us to create new, customised return streams that had greater value to investors.

In the early 1990s, hedge fund investors were mainly high net worth individuals. We believed if an institutional quality investment approach was applied, then the investor base would broaden to include institutions globally. In the late 1990s, we were one of the first firms to build a business to facilitate this.

Our institutional quality approach permeates every aspect of our business – from investments, to operations to client service. Further, our heritage as a hedge fund research firm continues to influence our culture, the way we invest and our commitment to bringing knowledge and insights to clients worldwide.