SEB launches a new venture capital investment program for Baltic fintechs

SEB has created a new programme for investments in Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian early-stage fintech companies.

Its purpose is to identify the most promising startups who have ideas with potential benefits for bank's clients, and provide them with financing to bring these ideas to life. Within next five years SEB intends to invest in 10 to 20 startups in Baltics.

Investments will typically range between 50 thousand and 200 thousand EUR per company, enabling the bank to take an active role in company’s development as a minority shareholder.

Ieva Tetere, CEO of SEB Latvia: "We wish to join forces with fintech companies who have clear ideas how to improve financial services, and work together to make it happen. Finance has to become simpler, easier to understand, more convenient, faster and safer. Startups can help us reach this goal with their innovative approach. For startups partnership with us will unfold new horizons for growth, access to clients and other resources. This new initiative is a substantial proof that we are ready for some serious investments and we see good potential in Baltic startup ecosystem."

Egita Poļanska, Head of Latvian Startup Association: “We are glad to see increasingly more initiatives, which are aimed at facilitating development of startups in Latvia. SEB’s new venture capital program will certainly bring value to the Latvian and Baltic startup ecosystem, especially in the area of financial technologies.”

Along with the financial investment SEB will provide companies with technical support, professional mentorship and consultations as well as other assistance to help companies grow faster and fulfil their ambitions.

This financing will be available both to startups working in financial services area as well as companies who have ideas with potential application in financial industry, for instance, through automation, machine learning or artificial intelligence solutions.

To start the dialogue with SEB, Latvian fintechs should fill out a form at www.seb.lv/fintech.

SEB group in Sweden has accumulated considerable experience of investing in fintech companies since 2016. SEB has invested in companies such as Tink, whose smartphone app enables convenient planning and managing of personal finances, r3, which has created a distributed ledger platform designed to record, manage and automate legal agreements between businesses, Capcito – enables small and medium sized enterprises to access dynamic capital based on the quality of their receivables, and in other companies.