In-house team vs outsourcing. What's better for fintech product development?

Is it a better idea to keep all development in-house, or outsource all or most of it? Some fintech leaders keep treating this as a binary choice. It rarely is, and the companies that get the most out of either model are the ones that stopped looking for a universal answer.

Three fintech leaders, three different setups. Yet, all of them draw the line for outsourcing software development in the same general place.

Why can't you outsource accountability?

Dennis Overbeeke, CTO at New10, has run the in-house vs outsourcing calculation from more angles than most.

Beyond his day-to-day role, he spent several months as New10's interim CEO, sitting in on strategy, risk, and regulatory conversations that most CTOs never touch.

That vantage point shapes how he frames build vs buy decisions. For him, it's not just a technical question. It's one about accountability.

Overbeeke also points to a fourth option most frameworks miss. Alongside build, buy, and outsource, some fintechs get to lean on shared capabilities.

In New10's case, that means resources from its parent bank for things like KYC and risk assessment. It's a reminder that the decision doesn't have to be binary, even before outsourcing enters the picture.

What should stay in-house?

Marilyn McDonald, CTO at Thredd, draws a similar line, just with a number attached to it. She works with a rough baseline of 70% employees to 30% contractors from IT outsourcing companies, with room to stretch that ratio when needed.

For McDonald, most accountability-critical work stays in-house, while external partners accelerate everything around it. The harder problem isn't the ratio itself. It's visibility.

Knowing where AI is being used and which vendor tools are in play is part of it. So is knowing what data each one can access.

Together, that visibility is what lets a CTO produce evidence on demand instead of scrambling when a regulator asks.

That distinction matters more as fintechs adopt more third-party AI tooling. A vendor model doesn't just do work for you. It becomes part of what you have to account for.

Does outsourcing mean settling for less?

Alex Rupin, Chief Product Officer at InvestEngine, offers the clearest counterpoint to the idea that keeping everything in-house is inherently safer or better.

His team leans on distributed hiring by design, not as a fallback.

That's nearshore software development in practice, chosen for access to skilled engineers rather than just lower rates.

The point isn't cutting corners. It's accessing skills that a single local hiring pool struggles to supply on its own timeline.

That constraint isn't unique to InvestEngine. The Financial Services Skills Commission's 2026 Annual Skills Report tracked a sample of financial firms where overall headcount fell, yet new hires rose.

Developer and IT architect roles remained hard to fill throughout.

Cutting internal headcount doesn't reduce the competition for the specialists a fintech company continues to need.

When does a long-term partner beat a hiring plan?

The strongest case for outsourcing software development isn't a short-term contractor filling a gap.

It’s about getting a partner that scales alongside the business over years, while the client keeps ownership of the outcome.

That's the shape of TSH's seven-year partnership with BrickVest, a UK real estate investment platform.

TSH built and scaled a full-stack team that peaked at 22 specialists, covering everything from AWS infrastructure to UX. BrickVest's own product leadership stayed in control of strategy and priorities throughout.

The team's size flexed with BrickVest's business needs rather than stayed fixed.

Over the partnership, BrickVest launched three products and listed €788 million in loans on the platform, a track record that led to its acquisition by Patrizia in 2020.

None of that required BrickVest to build a large internal engineering department from scratch.

It required a partner with enough embedded presence that the accountability for the product stayed where it belonged.

Can outsourcing reduce risk?

It sounds counterintuitive in a regulated industry, but a well-scoped dedicated development team can lower risk rather than add it.

Whether the expert is in-house or outsourced, it’s about getting someone who can explain, audit, and stand behind what is being shipped.

Overbeeke's experience with third-party vendors backs this up. His team runs a Change Risk Assessment on any new vendor before integrating them.

It covers both technical requirements like encryption and business ones like subcontractor use.

The process doesn't block outsourcing. It makes sure outsourcing doesn't expand what the company can't account for unnoticed.

Handled that way, an external team becomes an extension of engineering rather than a black box next to it.

The risk shifts from "who wrote this" to "who's accountable for it," and that second question needs an internal answer every time.

What makes fintech outsourcing work?

Three different leaders run three different ratios of in-house to external work, but they follow one shared rule for fintech software outsourcing. Ownership of the outcome never leaves the building, even when the people doing the work do.

1. Decide what's accountability-critical before deciding what to outsource,

2. Track vendor visibility with the same priority as the build-or-buy decision itself,

3. Treat outsourcing as a talent strategy, not a discount on quality.

The in-house-versus-outsourcing debate keeps resurfacing because fintechs keep asking it as an either-or question.

The leaders who've solved it stopped doing that a while ago.

• The interview with Dennis Overbeeke, CTO at New10,

• The interview with Marilyn McDonald, CTO at Thredd,

• The interview with Alex Rupin, CPO at InvestEngine.