Trustees have been urged to take action in response to the threats posed by the coronavirus, which has now been categorised as a pandemic by the World Health Organisation.

In a panel discussion at the PLSA Investment Conference, Mercer director of consulting, Brian Henderson, said that there are “nearly 50 actions they [trustees] could be taking right now”.

“If you look from a risk tolerance perspective, the market opportunity, the member communications, the business continuity, governance and how you tackle things like longevity – there's a lot of areas affected by this,” he stated.

Henderson urged trustees to begin a dialogue with their sponsor about their covenant and assess their cashflow policy.

He continued: “A lot of DB trustees will have cashflow requirements and you might be selling distressed assets at the moment, so you maybe want to look at your cashflow policy again, just in light of what is going on.

“If you're making any big strategic changes at the moment now might be the time to reassess that.

“Interest rates could be low for a lot longer now, so if you've got hedging in play you probably want to go back and make sure that its ticking along in the way you expected it to.”

He warned that things “be that bad” that trustees may even want to suspend transfer values curing the crisis, although the legality of this was later questioned.

“One that's jumping out in loads of client questions is all around bushiness continuity, particularly around administration and disruption to administration,” Henderson added.

“The challenge here is to ask to your administrator 'can you cope?' The administrators are pushing back and saying to companies 'can your payroll cope?'.

“There's a dynamic here that potentially could break down.”

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