A national phone-in number set up by citizens' advice bureaux in Germany has fielded 111,000 calls from Germans worried about the global financial crisis in just over a week, organizers said Monday.
Gerd Billen, head of the national advice bureaux association VZBV, appealed to the government to provide more funding for the service, established October 24.
While Germany has not suffered any broad collapse in real-estate prices or major factory closures, concern is widespread about what the future could hold.
Manfred Westphal, a financial-advice expert at the VZBV, said most callers wanted to know if their life-insurance policies, pensions and investments were safe.
He said the call centre had not been able to connect even one in 20 of the 111,000 callers to a financial adviser.
German exports plunged in November to record the biggest fall in nearly two decades, data released Thursday showed, as the deepening world economic downturn hits Europe's biggest economy.
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