Depends on the project. For banks it's less likely that you'll be able to do something remote, but for telcos it's less of a problem as they rely less on security by obscurity and both use and give back to Open Source projects a lot.
Also the financial sector doesn't consist only of banks, there are many well funded areas one could work for remotely.
But I know much more self employed professionals working on Java Web backends for big companies that earn equal or much more than I do.