The company’s contract portfolio rose 9.1% and includes 6.53 million contracts for vehicle financing (up 5%) and 2.9 million leasing contracts (up 10.3%).

In addition, it has 3.6 million service contracts (up 24%) and 5.37 million insurance agreements (up 5%).

The company reported nearly 2 million new contracts during Q1 2017, with 629,000 units in vehicle financing (up 2.9%), 323,000 new leasing contracts (up 5.9%), 376,000 new service contracts (up 4.7%) and more than 503,000 new insurance contracts (down 4%).

The decline in new insurance contracts is the result of the moderate growth of guarantee insurance concluded in comparison with Q1 2016, which had grown disproportionately during that period as a result of the company's Trust campaign.

Dr Christian Dahlheim, chief sales officer of Volkswagen Financial Services, said: “We are satisfied with our start in the financial year 2017. We have been able to increase the overall number of our new contract acquisitions even further than that achieved during our strong start to the year in 2016.”

The level of new contracts acquired in Europe, specifically in Italy, France and Spain, has shown particular growth, but equally positive growth has also been recorded in China and Mexico, the company said.

In Germany, the level of contracts rose to a new high of 6.12 million at the end of March, compared to 5.73 million for the same period last year, a rise of 6.8%

The total number of new contract acquisitions in Germany during the first quarter of 2017 amounted to 570,000 units, slightly below the previous year's figure of 581,000 units.

Volkswagen Financial Services’ key business fields cover dealer and customer financing, leasing, the bank and insurance business, fleet management and mobility offers. It has total assets of around €170.1 billion.