By contrast, the “free” financial investments, i.e. those without any longer-term contractual link, shrank by around one-quarter in the same period. Given the low interest rates this was especially at the expense of funds placed with banks or bond market investments. Credit institutions were only temporarily able to buck this trend by offering special savings instruments at attractive interest rates.
If private investments with life insurance enterprises (and pension funds) and in investment funds are taken together, this produces an investment volume of DM1,650 billion as of end-1998 – almost a doubling in volume since 1990. Its share in the statistically recordable private financial assets rose from around one-fifth to almost 30% during that period.