The number of new life insurance policies taken out over the first two months of this year is down 17% on a year ago, the Financieele Dagblad reports on Wednesday, quoting figures from the insurance statistics centre CVS.

Between January and February 2009 and 2008, the number of new contracts signed fell 25%.
For years, life insurance has been the main growth motor in the insurance sector, the paper says.
Experts say the decline is due to the recession and the public’s lack of confidence in life insurance as a way of building up assets. Instead, customers are switching to traditional savings products en masse, the paper says.
Life insurance providers have been under fire for some time for charging high fees which eat up too much of the potential growth.
A spokesman for independent financial advice group De Hyptheker said demand for savings products was up 65% in the first quarter of this year.