Pension scheme trustees, sponsors and members face considerable challenges in seeking to meet their funding commitments and aspirations. Financial markets have been volatile, inadequate returns from developed-world stock markets over the last decade have shaken investors' faith in equities, and falling interest rates have reduced income-based returns and exacerbated mismatches between defined benefit ("DB") schemes' assets and liabilities. Despite the recoveries in bond and equity markets since March 2009, which have served generally to improve the funding positions of DB pension schemes, many such plans are still in significant deficit. In the meantime, actuarial assumptions, accounting rules and regulation have become more onerous, intensifying the pressures on pension schemes.

Against that backdrop, investors have sought increasingly to tackle the various hurdles that confront them by looking at ways to reduce the risk in, or "de-risk", their investment portfolios.