The Chilean pension reform is one of the most famous examples of a policy innovation from the Global South that also had a significant impact in the Global North. Chilean-style pension privatisation sparked serious discussion in several OECD countries and clearly influenced some pension reforms in the Global North. However, the cross-national learning from this model followed a path that resulted in imperfections and distortions from the outset. Especially, the political and financial prerequisites of a substantial and drastic privatisation were dangerously underestimated. To a large extent, this was by design, as technocratic supranational organisations like the World Bank were very active in promoting these reforms, but had little mandate or interest in examining the ‘political underbelly’ of the Chilean reforms. Consequently, many countries that adopted similarly styled reforms underestimated the real political costs. In many countries, including cases in the Global North, privatisation efforts triggered massive political backlash, evident, for instance, in the overselling scandals and bankruptcies of private pension funds in the UK or the (partial) renationalisation of pension systems in Hungary and the Slovak Republic, to name just two. Thus, we can trace a direct connection from the distorted and incomplete forms of policy learning and their impact on the implosion of pension systems, especially following the Global Financial Crisis.