The last time business was this good for the mortgage insurance industry was before the country fell into the depths of the financial crisis. In addition, the month saw a decline in the number of defaults.
Mortgage insurance companies wrote 43,949 new policies during August. That worked out to coverage on $11.330 billion in home loans.
Activity strengthened from July, when 39,192 new policies were issued for $10.123 billion.
M.I. volume reflected business generated through Mortgage Insurance Companies of America members Genworth Mortgage Insurance Corp., Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corp. and Radian Guaranty Inc.
New business was also better than August 2011, when 27,301 policies were written for $5.688 billion. The year-over-year improvement is even more impressive when considering that the year-earlier numbers additionally reflected business from former MICA members PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. and Republic Mortgage Insurance Co.
The last time dollar volume was this strong was in July 2008, when 70,725 mortgage insurance policies were issued for $12.299 billion. What’s even more impressive is that in addition to PMI and Republic — the 2008 numbers also included volume from United Guaranty Corp. (though Radian hadn’t yet been added to the mix).
During the first eight months of 2012, MICA members generated 260,179 policies for $63.781 billion.
September’s new business likely increased based on new M.I. applications, which climbed to 46,891 in August from the prior month’s 42,229.
At $397.5 billion, primary insurance in force as of Aug. 31 was higher than the July 31 total of $396.4 billion. But the MICA book of business has a long way to go before catching up to the $598.6 billion in force as of Aug. 31, 2011.
Moving on to delinquency, last month saw 24,731 primary insurance defaults, fewer than the 25,166 in July. A year earlier, when data from PMI and Republic were still included, there were 48,187 defaults.
Primary insurance cures rose to 20,612 from July’s 18,430 and were 39,627 in August 2011.
