New business at Radian Guaranty Inc. hasn’t been this bad in nearly two-and-a-half years. Insured loan performance, however, has improved each of the last 14 months.
The Philadelphia-based firm reported that it wrote $1.90 billion in new policies during February.
Activity retreated from the previous month, when $2.40 billion in home loans were insured.
It was also worse than the same month in 2013, when volume was $3.29 billion.
In fact, it was the slowest month for Radian since September 2011, when $1.75 billion in policies were written.
Radian saw a total of $4.30 billion in new business during the first two months of 2014.
The mortgage insurance company continued making headway on loan performance, with its delinquent inventory receding to 55,891 loans from 58,782 in January.
A year earlier, 89,714 insured mortgages were past due.
The number of delinquent policies has declined each month since December 2012, when there were 93,169 past-due loans in the inventory.
Using an estimated 843,769 outstanding policies as of Feb. 28, the estimated delinquency rate last month was 6.62 percent.
The past-due rate was an estimated 6.99 percent as of Jan. 31 and 11.58 percent as of Feb. 28, 2013.
