Venture Leaders Fintech 2025: Captain's blog by Patrick Schär, founder of Selma

21.11.2025 09:12, Rita Longobardi

In November, the Venture Leaders Fintech 2025 team headed to London with a clear goal: to connect with key investors and experts in one of the world's leading financial hubs. We asked Venture Leaders Fintech Team Captain Patrick Schär to share his experience and take us behind the scenes of the week-long business development and investor roadshow.

The Venture Leaders Fintech program began a few weeks before the roadshow, starting with a full-day kick-off event in Zurich. The investor and business development roadshow then took place in London from November 10 to 14, 2025.

Monday, November 10 – Arrival in London
What a great day! We started with an early flight to London and gained insights about the local innovation ecosystem from Lutz-Peter Berg, followed by guidance on the UK market from Isabelle Wang at London & Partners. Kevin Palmer from Goodwille and Calvin Harvey-Worthington from SeedLegals shared practical advice on company setup, legal pitfalls, and fundraising. This information will certainly help all of us understand the UK landscape.

My personal highlight was the evening event: a private Raclette and pitch session at the home of Ara Yeromian, Managing Director at Teachers' Venture Growth. What could be cooler than connecting with investors in a cozy environment with a „Chääspfändli & an Einerli“?

As a proud team captain of the Swiss FinTech National Team, I’d like to introduce two standout players from our batch. Vadim Cissa from Alasso develops advanced options analytics to “beat the market faster”—a must for professional option traders. Anina Lutz from Calingo Insurance offers the coolest pet insurance. If your dog or cat isn’t insured yet, check them out today! I’m so excited for what’s coming next.



Tuesday
Day 2 of Venture Leaders Fintech in London was another fantastic experience. In the morning, we visited the FTT Fintech Festival, featuring talks about AI, user experience, and inclusiveness, while connecting with local banks and investors.

In the evening, we were invited by Ambassador Dominique Paravicini to a reception and pitching event in front of a hall full of investors and financial professionals, creating hundreds of new connections between Switzerland and the UK. A quick evening stop with the Venture Leaders included inspirational talks, a bit of shattered glass (luck for the coming days?), and wine poured by a partner from a law firm—preparing us perfectly for what lay ahead.

Two standout Swiss FinTech National Team players from today’s sessions are Anastasia Movcharenko from Calvin Risk, who can help test your AI, and Saverio Patimo from Insurteam, making travel insurance easy and convenient



Wednesday
Day 3 brought meetings with local VCs—super exciting and a tiny bit exhausting. Our Swiss National Team met investors from Balderton Capital, Augmentum Fintech, and Tencent. In the evening, a reception hosted by PostFinance allowed further exchanges with private investors and venture capitalists. I personally appreciated the depth with which the FinTech VCs understood our business and the spot-on questions they asked.

For Selma Finance, it was exciting to see that pension planning, scalable AI financial advice, and personal wealth are topics of strong interest in the UK, indicating a real need for our services. Three standout players from our batch today are Christian Dreyer from MachinaLabs, creating complex data analytics based on AI and big data; Omar Jerrari from Poncho, offering insurance that pays out if bad weather ruins your holiday; and Patrick Prinz from recoveris, delivering investigations, recovery, and compliance for digital assets.

Thursday and Friday
The last days of Venture Leaders Fintech in London were fully loaded. We visited Motive Partners in Canary Wharf, attended a pitch session at Anthemis Group, and explored Revolut’s brand-new offices, concluding with a fondue evening alongside UK entrepreneurs.

The final three Fintechs from our Swiss National Team are Eleanor Willi from rezonanz, who collects and cleans proxy voting data to make stewardship for institutional investors possible; Mert Baser from TransferChain, who encrypts and splits data so even your worst enemy cannot access it; and Selma Finance, making holistic financial advice available for everyone.

WOW. This week was a blast! Big thanks to everyone who made it possible.



My personal takeaways:
> The future of finance is embedded—Look at Revolut that generates revenue on insurances and eSIM cards directly in its app.

> Trust in AI matters—there’s real opportunity to build trustworthy and fail-safe AI applications in regulated industries such as finance and health.