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Providers of such risk transfer products believe the eurozone crisis could close off some opportunities for pension schemes, but create new ones as well, a report by the consultancy showed.
Ben Stone, a senior consultant at Towers Watson, said: "Market turbulence will open doors then quickly slam them shut, so schemes need to work with providers to accelerate the completion of transactions and lock down the price in the run-up to the trading day".
Given that pricing on such products can be volatile in relation to the value of the assets held by schemes, the firm suggested a trigger mechanism could be used if the pricing was not acceptable initially, in order to avoid missing opportunities when conditions changed.
Martin Bird, managing principal at Aon Hewitt and head of the Risk Settlement Group, said: "It also does not matter if the pension scheme has insufficient gilts to match all the pensioners, as there are a number of ways to insure a tranche of the pensioner group in the scheme, thus enabling the removal of a significant slice of the longevity risk".
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