Delinquency has declined for two consecutive months at Radian Group Inc. While there was no month-over-month change in new polices written, activity more than doubled from the same month last year.
The mortgage insurance company reported $2.0 billion in primary new insurance written during February.
There was no change in business volume from January. But the Philadelphia-based firm more than doubled its activity from February 2011, when just $0.7 billion in new policies were written.
Radian said its ending primary delinquent inventory was 107,230. A month earlier there were 109,830 loans in this category, while the figure was 122,918 a year earlier.
New delinquencies fell to 6,073 from January’s 7,192. Cures, meanwhile, climbed to 6,581 from 6,138.
Based on a Mortgage Daily estimate of outstanding policies, Radian’s primary delinquency rate was around 14.7 percent last month. It was the second month in a row that performance improved.
Defaults improved from a revised estimate of 15.0 percent in January.
During February 2011, delinquency was an estimated 16.0 percent.
Radian’s performance last month was in line with Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corp.’s February performance. MGIC reported that its new policies written were the same as the $1.3 billion written in January, while its estimated delinquency fell to 15.4 percent from 16.0 percent.
