Rising construction and car repair prices also led insurance companies to raise their prices last year.

"Broadly speaking, it stayed around 20 percent. Like inflation in general, prices went up. However, it is good to see that these major price increases have now been reduced. There will certainly be more, but hopefully not to that extent," said Veiko Sepp, head of Baltic property insurance at If Kindlustus.

Despite the price rises, people in Estonia have not been giving up on insurance policies.

"Customers still care about their assets and their health and so are still insuring themselves. Maybe it has affected the content of insurance to some extent - people haven't stopped buying it, but the content has been reduced, so to speak. In our experience, this has actually been more in relation to emotional products like pet insurance. Travel insurance has really come on in leaps and bounds. People are traveling more and more and also taking out insurance," Sepp said.

There has been little reduction in those taking out comprehensive or home insurance.

"The story behind this is probably that a lot of buildings and cars are after all covered by banks and leases, so it's not that easy to just give that up," Sepp said.

"People who are determined to buy a home will find €100 or €200 for it, even during a difficult time," said Estonian Insurance Association board member Andres Piirsalu.

However, leaving the amount for which items are insured unchanged can also cause problems.

"Inflation also means that people ought to review their own insurance contracts to make sure that the sum they are insured for, which is the maximum amount of compensation, corresponds to reality. There are agreed limits in the insurance contract on how much damage will be compensated, and if a home is completely destroyed, the amount the insurer is required to pay in compensation might not be enough," said Piirsalu.

However, the association fears that at some point, people may also start to cut back on insurance.

"The situation seems to be that the economic slowdown has not yet impacted the insurance sector. It will take between a year and eighteen months before the effects of an economic upturn or downturn start to affect insurance," Piirsalu said.

There is only one type of insurance that does not seem to be effected, regardless of whether the times are  good time or bad. Estonians it seems, show little interest in life insurance regardless of the broader economic situation, with only 30 percent having decided to take out life insurance policies.

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