Build vs Buy: Why Pricing Strategy Choices Matter More in 2026
•February 20, 2026
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Why It Matters
Choosing to buy rather than build frees senior talent for revenue‑generating innovation and ensures pricing models stay compliant and competitive in a fast‑moving market.
Key Takeaways
- •Internal builds risk becoming stagnant legacy systems
- •Vendor platforms offer continuous updates and shared regulatory insights
- •Opportunity cost of engineers outweighs short-term build savings
- •Modern pricing SaaS deploys in weeks, not years
- •Decision framework matches build to proprietary strategy, buy to scale
Pulse Analysis
In 2026, the pricing function has become a strategic battlefield where speed, scale, and regulatory agility trump pure engineering prowess. Cloud‑native architectures, open‑source analytics stacks, and modular APIs have collapsed development timelines from years to months, allowing banks to prototype sophisticated pricing models quickly. Yet this technical democratization creates a new dilemma: allocating senior engineers to maintain bespoke pricing infrastructure can siphon focus from higher‑margin initiatives such as digital product launches, customer experience enhancements, and data‑driven cross‑selling. The real question for leadership is not whether they can build, but what strategic opportunities they forfeit while doing so.
The hidden costs of an internal build extend far beyond initial development budgets. MVPs often achieve early success but lose momentum as iteration funds dwindle and original developers move on, turning flexible prototypes into rigid legacy systems. This stagnation forces costly rebuilds or extensive re‑engineering by year three, especially as regulatory expectations evolve. Moreover, retaining top‑tier engineers on maintenance tasks represents a significant opportunity cost; those talent pools could instead craft differentiated pricing strategies or innovate new product lines. Vendors, by contrast, continuously refine their platforms across a broad client base, surfacing edge‑case scenarios, compliance nuances, and operational risks that isolated teams might miss.
A pragmatic framework now guides the build‑vs‑buy decision: build when pricing workflows encode proprietary competitive advantage that justifies long‑term ownership, and buy when capabilities demand ongoing evolution, governance, and scale. Modern pricing SaaS platforms embody this shift, offering rapid deployment, configurable workflows, and continuous improvement driven by real‑world usage. By partnering with specialist providers, banks gain access to a living ecosystem that adapts to market volatility and regulatory change, allowing internal teams to focus on strategy rather than platform upkeep. In this environment, buying is no longer synonymous with static software; it is a strategic alliance that accelerates innovation and safeguards compliance.
Build vs buy: why pricing strategy choices matter more in 2026
For years, the build versus buy debate in pricing modernisation focused largely on technical feasibility. Institutions with capable engineers, strong data foundations and modern infrastructure often felt justified in developing pricing systems internally. According to Earnix, that logic reflected a different era, one in which simply getting a working system live was the primary challenge.
In 2026, that mindset is increasingly outdated. Most banks and lenders can now build sophisticated pricing tools if they choose to. The more relevant question today is whether building internally represents the best use of leadership attention, capital and scarce technical talent, particularly when pricing performance depends on speed, scale and sustained execution rather than a one-off delivery.
From feasibility to strategic focus
Cloud platforms, open-source technologies and mature analytics stacks have dramatically lowered the barriers to internal development. What once took years to engineer can now be prototyped in months. At the same time, lenders are operating in a far more demanding environment, shaped by volatile margins, faster expectations for time to value, growing regulatory scrutiny and intense competition from digital-first challengers.
In this context, every internal build comes with a trade-off. Time spent designing, maintaining and defending foundational pricing infrastructure is time not spent on innovation, customer experience or growth initiatives.
The strategic question has shifted from “can we build this?” to “what are we not doing while we build it?”
When MVPs quietly become legacy systems
Internal pricing initiatives rarely fail at launch. Teams deliver a minimum viable product, validate a pricing concept and support a specific business goal. However, once the initial success is achieved, momentum often fades. Iteration budgets shrink, original developers move on and institutional knowledge becomes fragmented.
Over time, these tools stop evolving. What was designed to be flexible becomes difficult to change, not because the technology is obsolete, but because sustained ownership and prioritisation have disappeared. This is how MVPs quietly turn into legacy systems.
Pricing, however, is never static. It requires continuous calibration, governance updates, regulatory alignment and analytical enhancement. Systems built as short-term projects struggle to support a discipline that must constantly adapt.
The hidden costs most analyses overlook
Traditional build versus buy assessments tend to focus on upfront development costs versus licence fees. This narrow comparison misses the factors that shape long-term outcomes. Pricing innovation does not pause after launch. New methodologies, market behaviours and regulatory expectations emerge every year. By year three, many internal systems lag behind, often triggering costly rebuilds.
There is also an opportunity cost. Highly skilled engineers remain one of the scarcest resources in financial services. When they are focused on maintaining pricing foundations, they are not developing differentiated strategies, launching new products or improving customer journeys.
Another often-overlooked factor is validation. Internal teams test systems within a single institution, while vendors refine platforms across many. Shared learnings surface edge cases, regulatory nuances and operational risks faster than isolated development ever could.
A practical framework for build vs buy
Leading organisations no longer see build and buy as mutually exclusive. They build when workflows encode proprietary strategy or when competitive advantage depends on highly specialised customisation that justifies long-term ownership. They buy when capabilities are complex, business critical and require continuous improvement, governance and scale.
Pricing analytics increasingly falls into the latter category. Success depends less on owning the software and more on how reliably and quickly it evolves in response to markets and regulation.
Why buying looks different in 2026
Historically, buying meant rigid platforms, lengthy implementations and limited flexibility. That experience shaped a generation of build-first decisions. Modern pricing platforms are fundamentally different. They deploy in weeks rather than years, adapt to organisational needs and improve continuously through real-world use.
Buying no longer means accepting a static tool. It means partnering with a specialist whose core focus is pricing excellence and whose platform becomes more valuable over time.
Read the full blog from Earnix here.
Copyright © 2026 FinTech Global
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