The third expert nearshoring provider has just wrapped their pitch deck, and now you're facing the decision that can shape your organisation’s next 12 or so months. Your roadmap demands external engineering support, but which delivery model serves your long-term strategy: fixed-price projects or embedded teams?
We've worked alongside CTOs in fintech and other regulated industries through this exact decision point dozens of times. What we've learnt is that everyone pushes their preferred model: project managers favour certainty, CFOs love locked-in numbers, and engineering leads want more hands on deck. Yet, the most successful leaders don’t budge under short-lived pressures or optimise for this year’s budget rather than next year’s strategic competitive win.
The delivery model decision will determine not only what gets built, but also how your team scales, how knowledge is transferred, and how quickly you can adapt when market conditions inevitably shift your priorities. To get past the sales pitches, here’s the clarity vendor calls rarely deliver: the real trade-offs between fixed-price and dedicated team models, and which approach fits your fintech's growth trajectory.
Deloitte's global survey reveals that cost reduction as a primary driver for engaging external teams has dropped from 70% to just 34% among companies in recent years. For UK fintech leaders juggling FCA compliance, open banking deadlines, and competitive pressure from challenger banks, this shift reflects a fundamental change in how we think about engineering partnerships: you’re no longer buying development hours, but investing in strategic capabilities.
This evolution explains why dedicated teams are increasingly challenging fixed-price arrangements as the go-to delivery model. But this is not to say fixed price is useless. Let's be honest about where fixed-price arrangements excel, because dismissing them entirely would be shortsighted.
The concept seems simple: define your project, get a quote, and pay the agreed sum. In fintech and finance, though, reality is rarely that tidy.
First, a small caveat: we're not talking about traditional outsourcing or body leasing. We're talking about expert, dedicated teams that embed tightly into your organisation, often from branded offices that operate almost like global in-house centres, but with resources and payroll handled by a partner.
In the UK fintech and regulated space, where senior engineers command salaries of £80k–120k+ and regulatory expertise can be scarce, this model provides scale and expertise without the hiring overhead.
Where dedicated teams fit your industry particularly well:
We offer both models because different contexts require different approaches. Our Team as a Service works for focused project delivery – we start within 30 days and handle everything through a Delivery Specialist. But we consistently see companies migrate to Dedicated Teams as they grow, not because fixed-price is wrong, but because growth rarely follows predictable project boundaries.
Here are some of the most frequent motivations behind that transition:
We invariably observe a recurring shift around Series A funding, where priorities shift fundamentally. Pre-funding, you're proving your concept viability to investors with constrained budgets. Post-funding, investors expect scalable operations, regulatory compliance, and competitive positioning. Yet, 75% of funded fintechs struggle with post-funding execution despite having capital.
This shift explains why many of our clients transition from fixed-price arrangements to dedicated teams precisely at this inflexion point. The change reflects the reality that post-funding development demands continuous adaptation rather than discrete project delivery.
The regulatory landscape makes this evolution inevitable. You might start with fixed-price support to meet a specific compliance deadline, only to discover that regulatory requirements don't arrive as isolated events but cascade continuously. Anti-money laundering updates trigger changes in data retention, which in turn require enhanced monitoring capabilities, followed by modifications to customer communication. Each change builds upon the last, creating interconnected compliance requirements that extend far beyond the boundaries of individual projects.
The same pattern emerges with technical infrastructure. Our Belgian fintech client, c-Quilibrium, started with just two developers for their 2018 proof-of-concept. But as their supply chain optimisation platform grew, one API integration led to many more. What began as discrete projects evolved into a platform infrastructure that required continuous expert attention. They eventually established three distinct, dedicated teams: Innovation, Enterprise, and Technical Support, embedded within their core operations.
Lastly, there’s the cost factor. Fixed-price contracts look clean until scope reality hits. We've tracked UK fintech clients who ended up paying 40-60% above their original quotes through legitimate change requests.
Consider a typical evolution: you scope an API integration project, then users demand connections to additional banking partners, PSD2 updates mandate authentication modifications, and evolving fraud prevention requirements necessitate the addition of expanded data fields. Each change triggers renegotiation cycles whilst dedicated teams absorb these shifts as natural components of ongoing platform evolution. The cost structure becomes more predictable even if individual monthly expenses vary.
For CTOs considering the transition from fixed-price to dedicated teams, our experience suggests a phased approach:
Choosing between fixed-price and dedicated teams isn't about right versus wrong. It’s about analysing where you are now and how much adaptability you'll need going forward. Here's a comprehensive checklist to guide your decision:
From all this, the trade-off is clear: fixed-price contracts work well for predictable, standalone projects with clear endpoints, while dedicated teams excel when you need adaptability, deep integration, and long-term partnerships.
The key insight: successful fintech scaling requires partnerships that evolve with your organisation's maturity, regulatory requirements, and competitive position. The delivery model you choose shapes not just immediate capabilities, but long-term adaptability in an industry where regulatory and competitive changes arrive without warning.