Almost half of final salary pension funds have moved assets from equities to bonds in the past year, as they respond to market volatility and aim to match assets more closely with liabilities, figures show.

Some 46 percent of British defined benefits schemes, collectively worth billions of pounds, have reallocated funds from equities to bonds in the past 12 months, according to a survey by Aon Consulting.

Around 54 percent said they had made no change to their investment strategy.

The poll of more than 100 pension managers also found that pension schemes have adopted a wider range of diversifying asset classes, which are used to reduce investment risk without reducing expected returns.

British property continued to be the most popular non-equity asset, with almost half of all schemes (44 percent) holding this in their portfolio.

Private equity, absolute return funds and diversified growth funds are also proving popular.

Daniel Peters, an investment consultant and actuary at Aon, said: "It's no surprise that as pension schemes mature and trustees become increasingly risk aware, nearly half have moved some part of their growth portfolio into matching assets.

"To reduce volatility further, growth assets require diversification away from equities.

"Alternative assets - such as funds of hedge funds - that have low correlations with more traditional investments can be used to target a similar level of return to equities, but with lower volatility."

While stock markets have tumbled during the first quarter of this year, funds of hedge funds have proven resilient.

"Initial indications show that during the credit crunch and the subsequent fall out already seen during 2008, volatility of these funds is considerably reduced compared to the traditional equity-only strategies," added Peters.

By size, the schemes analysed are almost equally split between those with assets of more than 500 million pounds, between 100 and 500 million pounds, between 25 and 100 million pounds, and up to 25 million pounds.