The Life Insurance Association of Japan said Friday that new individual life insurance contracts held by its 42 member firms were down 12.1 percent in the fiscal first half of 2003 from a year earlier.

The firms held a combined 53.18 trillion yen in such contracts in the April-September period. The balance of individual life insurance contracts came to a combined 1.179 quadrillion yen as of Sept. 30, down 4.4 percent, the association said.

The number of new medical care insurance contracts grew 31.1 percent, although their total value slid 3 percent to 427 billion yen, it said.