VEF : Dear Stakeholders,

As we close out 2021, we reflect on another strong year of life at VEF and share our thoughts on the year gone by, our current positioning, and the outlook for 2022 and beyond.

2021 was another year of strong NAV per share growth for VEF, while our share price grew c. 50% during the year at the time writing. These two key metrics are what we live and die by, and their performance through 2021 continues a proud track record that has seen us deliver 30%+ IRR in both since 2015.

As always, driving this performance has been the larger names within our portfolio. Creditas, 30% of our NAV as at 3Q21, is established as one of the benchmark names coming out of the very exciting Brazil/LatAm fintech ecosystem. Its publicly reported headline quarterly results show the core secured lending businesses growing close to 3x YoY while it continued to broaden its offering and increase its TAM via M&A and partnerships, most notably with Nubank. 2022 is set to be another busy and potentially benchmark year for Creditas, and hence VEF, as it makes strides towards an IPO. In summary, Creditas is a standout success story within the current portfolio, with growth compounding from an ever-larger base. It is our next Tinkoff - the highest compliment we can pay any EM fintech. As exciting is the group of names towards the top end of our portfolio in terms of size, that have all delivered stellar performance in 2021, growing at a very healthy clip and raising fresh capital in size across the board in the year - Konfio ($235mn Series E), Juspay ($60mn Series C), TransferGo ($50m Series C), Jumo ($120m funding round). Having such a broad range of well-funded fintechs across an array of scale emerging markets bodes well for NAV and portfolio growth into 2022 and beyond. In total, in 2021 we invested a further c. $65mn into our portfolio companies, backing our winners harder and always looking for 30% IRRs on every dollar we put to work.

Four new companies entered the VEF portfolio in 2021, with Minu (financial wellness, Mexico), Rupeek (gold-backed lending, India) and Abhi (financial wellness, Pakistan) all arriving in 1H21. Investing in 2H21, BlackBuck is the latest addition to the portfolio and our first foray into the world of embedded fintech, a space we are spending a lot of our time on and continue to see interesting and diverse dealflow. BlackBuck is a trucking marketplace for India, but earns the majority of its revenues from payments. Pipeline-wise, 2021 was our busiest year to date, with over 300 new companies screened in this period. We continue to refine our processes, but we are very in tune with what we want in a VEF investment, with the majority of deals that hit our funnel being passed on for one reason or another.

A major positive for the team and business was a return to travel in 2H21, when we spent time on the ground in Mexico, Turkey, Egypt and Brazil. Being back on the ground with our companies, pipeline and venture partners was refreshing and energising, and a reminder of the benefits and edge we have from being very present in-country across our core markets of focus.

2021 was also a year of exits from two portfolio names in Brazil that didn't work out as anticipated, Guiabolso and Xerpa. In both cases we received a partial return of capital and banked more education and learnings than returns. We move on and are happy to be able to free up attention and resources to focus on more rewarding endeavours in 2022.

Capital, and access to it, is clearly an important part of the success playbook for VEF and we have enjoyed exceptional support from our shareholder base over the last 12 months. We entered 2021 having just closed a $60m raise and followed that up with a $100m raise, priced at NAV, in August. We are grateful for the ongoing support from our investors to date, from long-standing shareholders early in our journey like Libra, Robur and Ruane Cunniff, to investors who have come in and grown with our story over time like Fidelity, Wellington, and Wasatch, to the most recent additions like Robeco, Principal and Highclere. We pride ourselves on transparency and delivery for those who have entrusted us with their capital. What has been especially pleasing to see is a number of VEF investors directly investing in some of our portfolio companies in later-stage private funding rounds. We work hard for both our investors and portfolio companies, and look to continue to be a conduit of capital from the world's largest investors to some of the most exciting fintech names across the emerging world.

We continue to build VEF as a business for the long term and 2021 delivered some key milestones on this endeavour. Team size and shape continues to evolve and we now count 6 on our investment team with a view to continue to bolster resources in 2022, always looking to add talent and resource in line with our success, and not ahead of it. The direction of travel on the ESG front remains positive, with the move of our holdco structure from Bermuda to Sweden during 2021 being a key governance milestone. We were also thrilled to add new board member, Hannah Loikkanen (Finnfund, Bank of Georgia) at our AGM in May, who has shown to be a great fit and value-add from the off. At a portfolio level, our companies continue to do us proud driving sustainable and inclusive finance through the many geographies and segments they serve. Finally, we closed out 2021 with our first in-person board meeting in Stockholm since early 2020, which was an overdue positive and easily the most engaging and value-added board meeting we have had since the beginning of this pandemic.

While we have had a very clear strategy from day one at VEF, we embrace innovation and change, and are very aware that those who do not evolve are prone to fail and/or die. And so it is that during our 6 years of investing we have broadened our geographic reach, invested across the funding stage spectrum, and continue to broaden the definition of fintech. For 2022 we are looking forward to expanding our geographic scope and knowledge base into SE Asia and continue to deepen our understanding of the evolving trends and opportunity within crypto and Web3.

At one point our permanent capital structure was seen as unique and somewhat strange amongst a peer group of traditional venture capital and private equity LP structures. In 2H21, Sequoia Capital clearly helped to bring the idea of a permanent capital structure into the mainstream. We have always vaunted the merits of it, enabling us to look through macro, political and market cycles and use these often short-term distortions as windows to invest harder in long-term structural winners at a time when others are running for the hills. History has taught us that our best returning bets have been in these windows - this is how we ended up in Tinkoff (Russia and Tinkoff at a low ebb in the 2015 crisis), iyzico (we invested when the tanks were on the streets in 2016) and Creditas (as global capital couldn't look beyond yet another Brazilian macro downturn in 2016-17). Time has proven that great, innovative companies are built across all emerging markets over time, irrespective of the cycles and volatility that tends to come with the terrain.

On that note, I would like to thank you all for following and supporting our growing company through 2021 and indeed since inception. With a strong track record of delivery behind us, we feel we are in as strong a position as we have ever been to create value for all our stakeholders in 2022 and beyond. In many ways we continue to feel like we are only getting started.

Dave Nangle

For further information please contact:

Henrik Stenlund, CFO: [phone]

About Us

VEF AB (publ). is an investment company whose Common Shares are listed in Sweden. We invests in growth stage private fintech companies, take minority stakes and are active investors with board representation in our portfolio companies, always looking to back the best entrepreneurs in each market. We focus on scale emerging markets and invest across all areas of financial services inclusive of payments, credit, mobile money and wealth advisors. VEF trades in Sweden on Nasdaq First North Growth Market under the ticker VEFAB. For more information on VEF, please visithttp://www.vef.vc.

VEF's Certified Adviser on Nasdaq First North Growth Market is Aktieinvest FK AB, [phone], [e-mail].

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Dear Stakeholders,