Introduction

The concept of financialisation has been used by scholars in a range of disciplines since the turn of the century to describe structural developments in late-modern capitalism. Financialisation refers broadly to ‘the increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation of the domestic and international economies’ (Epstein, 2006: 3). A larger role for finance has been identified as a generator of growth, as a political actor and in the everyday lives of citizens (van der Zwan, 2014). Most commentators regard this process as inextricably connected to a broader neoliberal economic and social transformation (eg Langley, 2010).

Social policy scholars have been slower to enter this debate, though pension commentators have long been interested in financial markets given the greater use of private pensions, since the 1990s, to manage the fiscal demands on public provision stemming from population ageing (eg World Bank, 1994). Consideration of financialisation has focused particularly on the rise of defined contribution pensions, highlighting the greater level of individualised and personal interaction this has encouraged between citizens and the financial sector. This development has also generally been seen as unequivocally neoliberal, hand in glove with retrenching reforms designed to substitute private provision for public (eg Cutler and Waine, 2001). Thus, Berry has recently argued that the UK state has driven forward a consistent Thatcherite pension financialisation agenda since the late 1980s, under which ‘[f]inancial risks that might have at one time been shouldered by the state are instead individualised’ (Berry, 2015: 510; see also Berry, 2016).

This chapter, in contrast, argues for a less rigid, more fluid understanding of UK pension financialisation – one that is less deterministic and more negotiated. Following van der Zwan (2014: 118), it suggests existing accounts paint too neat a picture of financialising processes that fails to fully incorporate ‘the possibilities for agency by local actors’. Specifically, the chapter argues that UK pension financialisation has involved the interaction of financialising and progressive social protection agendas1 over the last three decades. Thus, rather than constituting an inexorable and continuous path, driven by a determined neoliberal state, ‘emergent forms of collectivity and solidarity within the financialized political economies’ (van der Zwan, 2014: 119) are evident.