September was a satisfying month. I continued my explanation of how UK pension policy has evolved by charting the rise and fall of the gold-standard private sector pension scheme. A discussion with people who have long pension memories on LinkedIn revealed how the changes over the course of the 1990s turned defined benefit pension from…

In my last post, I discussed how the introduction of new accounting standards at the start of the millennium cemented the fate of the private sector defined benefit pension scheme. This post continues this discussion explaining how to value future liabilities and why the new rules caused conniption fits among finance directors and shareholders. I…

In the last post, I discussed how changes during the 1990s turned defined benefit pension from a useful recruiting tool into an expensive liability. By the end of the decade many companies chose to close these schemes to new members. At the start of the millennium, however, changes to national accounting standards made many choose…

In the first post of this series explaining the history of UK pensions, we discussed the concept of a retirement income and the evolution of the state pension. Unlike other European countries, the UK state pension was conceived as a basic income to keep people from becoming impoverished in old age rather than a way…