New ways for company pension schemes to calculate the cost of future promises to members are being reviewed by the government in an attempt to ease the pressure of rising deficits.

Ros Altmann, the pensions minister, said she was reviewing how schemes could account for their liabilities, as new measures to ease the economic shocks from Brexit are expected to inflate pension shortfalls.

More than 11m people are reliant on a defined benefit pension to deliver their retirement income, with the employer backing the scheme on the hook for meeting the pension promises.

But UK pension deficits hit a record £935bn this week, according to Hymans Robertson, the consultants, as gilt yields, the assets used to help value the cost of future payments, hit record lows.

Baroness Altmann said employers and trustees currently had flexibility in how they valued future pension promises but this was not widely taken up.

“We need to look at why this flexibility is not used, and whether there are broader options to help support employers making contributions to repair deficits,” she said.

She added that she believed there was “a case for considering how pension liabilities are currently valued for regulatory purposes”.

Finding ways to ease short-term pressures on employers facing ballooning deficits has formed part of a wider discussion Ms Altmann has been having with the regulator and Pension Protection Fund about the long-term sustainability of defined benefit schemes. Officials stressed no decisions had yet been made.

“We need to bear in mind that the effect of quantitative easing, or the stimulus to respond to the economic shock of Brexit, is not undermined by companies who are running DB schemes seeing an increase in their deficits,” she added.

Rising pension deficits could mean that employers are forced to pour more money into their schemes.

The Pensions Regulator said two months ago that many employers were able to maintain or increase contributions to repair their pension deficits. It has since said that in the light of Brexit, it may review this guidance.

In 2012, before she became pensions minister, Baroness Altmann argued for UK pension funds and insurers to be allowed to use a longer-term average measure of government bond yields for valuation purposes when markets were facing exceptional conditions.

However, in 2013, the government rejected proposals to allow pension funds to use a smoothed discount rate in an effort to buffer against rising deficits.

“There is definitely a case for new review in light of the prospect of more quantitative easing,” said Patrick Bloomfield, partner at Hymans Robertson. “Questions do need to be asked if the current legislation is adequate and is being adequately applied.”

Other experts said that tweaking the current framework could do “more harm than good”.

“I think there is a sufficient flexibility in the current legislative framework for trustees and employers to reach sensible agreements on scheme funding, which reflect each scheme’s specific circumstances,” said Graham McLean, head of funding at Willis Towers Watson, the pension consultants.

He said he did want a “framework that is too prescriptive”.

“Smoothing may reduce liabilities now but could increase them in the future if interest rates rise, and may also introduce an inconsistency between asset and liability values,” he said.