The coronavirus outbreak is having a significant financial impact on millions more Britons than other recent global crises, with nearly one in four people taking a hit to the value of their pension funds last week.

At least 9.9 million people in the UK now have a pension with a private scheme whose value is directly linked to investments in the stock markets, which fell dramatically as the scale and impact of the Covid-19 outbreak became clearer.

That is nearly 10 times the number of people who had a private scheme in 2008 during the global financial crisis, which many economists are using as a benchmark for the potential impact of coronavirus.

Private pension schemes are heavily exposed to the stock markets. Shares fell by 11% in London and 8% in New York last week, leaving British pension funds worth about 5% to 6% less than on Monday. Members of private schemes can switch funds, often without taking any financial advice, which has prompted fears that some will make bad investment decisions if the FTSE 100 and other markets continue to fall.

Neal Hall of financial advisers Atherton York said selling now would “crystallise losses”.

“The worst thing to do is get nervous,” he said. “People should look at this as an opportunity to look under the bonnet of their pension. A lot of people are comparing this to 2008 but there are very different circumstances. People retiring in 2008 would have been less reliant on investment-led pensions.”

The tenfold increase in private pensions began in 2012 when the government introduced rules obliging employers to automatically enrol their workers into the company pension scheme. Up to that point, people were often members of a “defined benefit” company scheme that paid out amounts based on an employee’s final salary, or they relied entirely on the state pension. Those people are not directly affected by movements in the stock markets because they receive a guaranteed amount of money.

But those retiring this year with about £250,000 in their pension saw the value of their savings drop by about £13,000 over the last week.

About 700,000 people will reach retirement age this year, of whom 230,000 have a private pension. They may have to continue working or rely on other savings – if they have them – to support them.

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Maike Currie, director for workplace pensions at Fidelity International, said: “If you are on the cusp of retirement, you still need to hold tight if you can. By withdrawing funds when they’re at lower levels, you are compounding any losses that you could very easily have made up. The key is not to panic.”

Many of the new members of private pensions are part of Nest, a scheme set up by the government. Mark Fawcett, the chief investment officer for Nest, said they had examined people’s behaviour during the global financial crisis.

“Most people did nothing when they saw the value of their investments fall,” he told Radio 4’s Moneybox on Saturday. “But the group most likely to make a bad decision was younger members. We saw them making decisions like stopping investing, or switching to low-risk funds because the markets were falling.”

Those most vulnerable to the stock market dip are among the 700,000 people reaching retirement age this year. Economists believe investors should brace themselves for more bad news. Daniel Grosvenor, director of equity strategy at Oxford Economics, said he believed the share sell-off would continue. His colleague Gregory Daco, the consultancy’s chief US economist, said that provided the coronavirus did not become a regional or global pandemic, the impact would be relatively modest.

“If the coronavirus outbreak becomes a global pandemic, the consequences would be much more severe,” he said in a briefing note to investors. “Along with the human costs that would entail, the US economy would fall into a recession.”

That would be the “the second-sharpest recession since the 1980s”, he added. “Still, our scenario assumes the shock from the global pandemic proves temporary”, with the US economy bouncing back by the end of 2021.