Pension savers faced turmoil today as the Bank of England took urgent action to stop retirement firms collapsing.
The Bank has started buying up bonds in an emergency move to avoid a “material risk to UK financial stability”.
Pension funds faced "mass insolvencies" without action from the BoE, Sky News reports.
The chain of events started after the pound plunged in the wake of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng ’s Mini-Budget last week.
In turn, that led to the price of gilts falling.
Gilts, or government bonds, are often bought by pension funds as an investment.
The job of pension funds is to take pension contributions from workers and invest it to grow the cash - paying for our retirements.
Gilts are part of their investments, because after a set amount of time they pay out interest.
But pension funds came under pressure from banks this week to sell their gilts to raise cash quickly, the FT reports .
The problem was that gilt prices had fallen, leading to a black hole in many pension funds' accounts.
The Bank of England has now said it will buy up old UK government bonds, which should push the price of them up for everyone else - and hopefully fix the problem.
What does this mean for my pension?
The good news is your pension is safe if a pension fund goes bust.
The bad news is you might not get all of your money back.
It all depends what sort of pension you have.
For most private or workplace pensions, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme guarantees 100% of your pension if a fund goes bust.
But if you have a self-invested personal pension, or SIPP, that falls to up to £85,000 per person.
The news today does not affect the state pension.
A Bank of England statement today said: "As the Governor said in his statement on Monday, the Bank is monitoring developments in financial markets very closely in light of the significant repricing of UK and global financial assets.
"This repricing has become more significant in the past day - and it is particularly affecting long-dated UK government debt.
"Were dysfunction in this market to continue or worsen, there would be a material risk to UK financial stability.
"This would lead to an unwarranted tightening of financing conditions and a reduction of the flow of credit to the real economy."
It comes as the Chancellor met with business leaders today, with executives from major banks seen leaving through the front door of the Treasury.
None of them responded to questions put by reporters about what assurances had been offered by Mr Kwarteng in the wake of the pound's slumping value.
The Treasury has said the government will continue to "work closely" with the Bank of England.
A Treasury spokesperson said: "The Bank of England, in line with its financial stability objective, carefully monitors financial markets and any potential risk to the flow of credit to the real economy, and subsequent effects on UK households and businesses.
"Global financial markets have seen significant volatility in recent days.
"The Bank has identified a risk from recent dysfunction in gilt markets, so the Bank will temporarily carry out purchases of long-dated UK government bonds from today in order to restore orderly market conditions."
Rachel Reeves has called for an "urgent statement" from the Chancellor to address "the crisis that he has made".
The shadow Chancellor said of the Conservatives: "Their decisions will cause higher inflation and higher interest rates - and are not a credible plan for growth.
"The Chancellor must make an urgent statement on how he is going to fix the crisis that he has made."
