Anyone who has ever had to supervise significant FinTech Development knows the problems associated with it. FinTech development requires a rather unique combination of skill sets.
Not only does the development team need to be up to date on the latest technologies..it also needs a pretty good understanding of financial markets and the supporting logic behind it.
What makes FinTech development so unique is a requirement for very efficient (=fast) code. Often times FinTech applications are competing for 1/1000th of a second..so any unnecessary hicks ups in the code render the software at a competitive disadvantage. The use the latest and most efficient languages and language environments are a true necessity.
On top of that a lot of the applications requires a pretty good understanding of the algorithms supporting the FinTech development. There is a rather steep learning curve associated with the proper use of the formulas required to make an application succeed.
That combination is not always easy to come by. However...Romania seems to be specifically targeting those skill sets to get its software development industry going.
It clearly seems to be working, a bunch of European financial powerhouses have set up shop in Romania.
Their reasoning being that they not only find good local development talent, the talent is also well educated as it relates to the financial markets. The local university offers a combined Computer Science, Math , Economics curriculum which makes their graduates "prime" for the challenges encountered in FinTech Development.
The total numbers of developers available in Romania is of course minimal compared to countries like India, Phillipines or China.
Regardless though, it is an interesting niche solution for specialized niche development.