From Europe to LATAM and the Middle East, How Financial Institutions Are Redrawing the Global Expertise Map
Banks are broadening how they think about global technology delivery, moving away from single-location build models and towards more distributed, flexible networks of expertise. Alongside Poland’s continued strength, a wider set of European, LATAM, and Middle Eastern locations is emerging as a compelling opportunity to expand capability, unlock new talent pools, and build more resilient delivery models.
Simon Keates
Technology & Innovation Consultant
simon.keates@caspianone.co.uk
Cost discipline is once again having a big say in technology strategy across finance, but this time the conversation is broader than a straightforward move from expensive headquarters to lower-cost delivery hubs. Senior client conversations repeatedly return to the same themes of tighter budgets, pressure to do more with less, platform consolidation, and a growing need to find technology expertise outside London and New York.
Those two cities still matter for leadership, proximity to revenue teams, and specialist front-office work, but they are increasingly being treated as premium locations rather than default build centres. At the same time, banks are looking at where they can scale engineering capacity with more flexibility, more resilience, and better long-term economics. That is why Europe remains central to the conversation, while LATAM, and the Middle East are becoming more visible in location strategy discussions.
Across Europe, the conversation is expanding. Poland remains a frequently referenced market, particularly in cities such as Warsaw, Kraków, and Wrocław, but other locations are increasingly part of the discussion. Romania is often considered where additional scale and cost flexibility are needed, while Portugal is gaining traction for platform engineering and DevOps capability. Dublin tends to be positioned differently, typically selected for its regulatory alignment, cloud infrastructure maturity, and proximity to European stakeholders rather than cost advantage.
McKinsey’s Global Banking Annual Review 2025 notes that banks are under mounting pressure to generate more value with greater precision. That matters here because location strategy is no longer an isolated real estate or procurement decision. It is becoming part of a broader operating model reset, one that links expertise, cost, capability and execution speed more tightly than before.
Which locations are being spoken about most frequently, and what’s driving their rise?
Poland remains one of the most frequently discussed markets in Europe, but it is no longer the only growth story. Increasingly, Brazil and South America in general are being brought up in conversation alongside Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and alternative parts of Eastern Europe. The reasons are slightly different in each case.
In LATAM, the draw is usually nearshoring logic, similar or overlapping time zones for North American firms, improving access to software and engineering expertise, and a cost base that remains materially below the US.
In the Middle East, the story is more about attracting professionals, financial centre momentum, and the appeal of a location that can sit between European and Asian market hours while also attracting senior professionals relocating from traditional centres.
In Eastern Europe, the attraction is more familiar, engineering density, EU adjacency in some markets, and a balance of quality and cost that still feels workable for regulated environments.
CBRE’s Scoring Tech Talent 2025 says that Latin America’s tech expertise landscape has expanded rapidly in recent years and that average wages in the region remain about 39 per cent of those in the US. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that Dubai’s financial hub had attracted close to four dozen hedge funds with more than $1 billion in assets by late 2024, alongside a sharp rise in financial-services employment, which signals broader ecosystem maturity rather than a small cluster of outliers. Together, those trends help explain why new locations are being discussed more confidently in banking transformation programmes.
What are the trade-offs between cost, capability, time zone, and cultural alignment?
Most financial institutions are not picking locations on cost alone. Even if cost is the clearest initial driver, the more mature conversation is about balance. Leaders want a market that is cheaper than London or New York, but they are equally focused on whether the specialist pool can handle complex engineering work, whether teams can collaborate in real time with core business stakeholders, and whether domain knowledge in areas like capital markets, payments, or financial crime is already present. That is why the lowest-cost option does not always win. For some roles, a cheaper market may be attractive on paper, but financial institutions still prioritise locations where engineers can work within the rhythms of a regulated enterprise, communicate effectively with business teams, and ramp up quickly.
That is why location decisions are increasingly made as part of a broader structure rather than a one-off choice. A single market may offer the right balance for core delivery, but additional locations are often introduced to solve for specific constraints such as scaling speed, specialist capability, or regulatory requirements
Some markets offer faster scale-up because of shorter notice periods and deeper existing networks. That may sound operational, but it has real strategic weight. A bank trying to build a new pod, modernise a legacy platform, or support a new payments or e-trading initiative often needs to decide not only where the expertise is, but how quickly it can become productive. In that context, capability and time-to-productivity can outweigh salary implications alone. Cultural alignment works in a similar way because banks are more comfortable building at scale, where communication style, working norms, and stakeholder engagement feel easier to manage across distributed teams.
Is Poland still outperforming other regions in terms of value and engineering depth?
The answer is still yes, at least for a large share of banking technology work. Poland is consistently described as a “happy medium”, a location that combines strong engineering quality with a substantial saving against London. That is significant, but the more important point is why that saving has remained compelling. Poland is not being positioned as a bargain option. It is being positioned as a serious engineering market, one where banks can build teams with enough technical depth to handle modernisation, cloud work, platform engineering, and broader enterprise transformation without stepping too far away from European time zones or governance expectations.
The World Bank has argued that Poland’s next phase of competitiveness depends on faster technology adoption, productivity growth, and investment in skills, which aligns with the picture of a market still moving forward rather than one standing still. At the labour-market level, EURES reports that Poland’s employment rate remains above the EU average and unemployment is comparatively low, which supports the idea of a stable, active workforce. None of that means Poland is the answer for every mandate, but it does explain why it continues to outperform as an all-round option for banks looking for value and engineering depth in the same place.
That said, Poland’s strength is also helping create a new phase in the broader discussion. The question is no longer whether Poland is viable, for many institutions, it clearly is. The question is whether Poland should remain the main anchor while newer regions are added around it. That is an important distinction, because it suggests the market has matured from “Should we build there?” to “How should we build around it?”
Other European hubs are not secondary options, though. Romania continues to attract interest for its flexibility and cost profile, Portugal for its growing strength in modern engineering disciplines, and Dublin for its infrastructure, regulatory alignment, and concentration of multinational technology investment. In practice, these locations are increasingly used to complement, rather than compete with, Poland’s position.
Is diversification of locations for resilience, cost, or access to specialised skills?
Diversification is emerging as a structural decision r. “Follow the sun” coverage comes up directly in many conversations, as does the need for global presence across multiple regions. That implies a more deliberate multi-hub model, where different locations support different needs. One hub may concentrate engineering and platform work, another may improve time-zone coverage for revenue or support functions, and another may help with access to niche skill sets or faster scaling. In that model, diversification is not about replacing one location with another but reducing dependence on a single centre and building a delivery footprint that can absorb pressure more effectively.
This is where London and New York are losing ground. They remain essential in banking, but they are increasingly used for what only they can do, leadership density, front-office proximity, certain specialist domains, and high-value stakeholder interaction. The build-out work, especially when budgets are tight and multiple transformation programmes are running at once, is being distributed more intentionally. McKinsey’s recent work on global capability centres describes a similar evolution, with global centres moving beyond simple cost efficiency and becoming engines of enterprise capability, innovation, and resilience. That mirrors what we’re frequently hearing that banks are not simply moving work away from high-cost cities but redesigning how global technology delivery works.
Where do financial institutions expand next?
If the question is framed as a single ‘next-expansion’ move, rather than an entire portfolio strategy, Poland still looks like the strongest recommendation for many organisations, especially those headquartered in the UK or Europe. The reason is not that it is the cheapest market available but that it offers one of the most balanced combinations of cost efficiency, engineering quality, regulatory comfort, time-zone alignment, and scalability. It is the location most clearly described as already working in practice. That matters to organisations making a new investment because they will not just want theoretical value.
For institutions that already have a mature presence in Poland, the next recommendation becomes more context-specific. If the priority is North American alignment and software scale, then selected LATAM markets are likely to come under closer review. If the priority is attracting senior financial experts, extending market-hour coverage, or building a presence closer to emerging pools of capital, then Abu Dhabi or Dubai may move up the list. But if the brief is simply, “Where should we expand next to get the best overall balance of cost and capability?”, Poland still appears to be the most defensible answer.
And while Poland remains highly competitive and continues to anchor much of this activity within Europe, around it, a small number of complementary locations are being used more deliberately to extend capability and resilience. Beyond the region, LATAM and the Middle East are expanding the conversation further, but the overall direction is the same: fewer single-location strategies and more interconnected delivery models.
Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available, AI-assisted research and Caspian One’s market expertise as of the time of writing; written by humans. It is intended for informational purposes only and should not be considered formal advice or specific recommendations. Readers should independently verify information and seek appropriate professional guidance before making strategic hiring decisions. Caspian One accepts no liability for actions taken based on this content. © Caspian One, March 2025. All rights reserved.
Read more or search for topics that matter most to you!
