The democratisation of finance? : financial inclusion and subprime in the UK and US

Focusing on the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (US) in the period since the mid-1990s, this thesis analyses the changes in retail financial markets and associated questions of financial democratisation, financial inclusion and exclusion. Specifically, it concentrates on the rise and crisis in the subprime sector of mortgages and consumer credit markets which targeted borrowers who had previously been excluded on a range of grounds. The analysis offered situates these changes and developments in the financialisation of economic life; processes understood as produced through three co-constitutive forces: financialised accumulation, financialised risk management, and financialised discipline. Together, the financialisation of accumulation, risk management and discipline are shown to have driven forward changes in retail finance in general and the rise of subprime in particular, apparently furthering financial inclusion and enabling homeownership. However, experiences of financial inclusion are shown to have been ambiguous, marked by increased levels of indebtedness and rates of interest higher than those prevailing in mainstream markets. Moreover, the forces of financialisation are also shown to have contained contradictions and tensions that were crucial to the crisis in the subprime sector. The crisis, then, is held to raise yet further analytical and policy questions about the problems and prospects of market-led financial inclusion. Ultimately, the thesis argues that unless policymakers support and re-start a closely regulated subprime sector, stark exclusion will characterise post-crisis financialised economic life in the UK and US