The title insurance business is reliant on mortgage application activity to drive its results. The Mortgage Bankers Association's April forecast reported an over 100,000 decline in unit volume of mortgage originations between the fourth and first quarters, from 1.57 million to 1.46 million.
Still for the four largest title underwriting families, the first quarter's open order counts benefitted from two months of falling interest rates. For example, at Fidelity National Financial, whose underwriting units combined have the industry's largest market share, daily purchase order count was up 25% from the fourth quarter and 2% from the first quarter last year, said Mike Nolan, CEO on its earnings call.
He did give one note of caution: "Volumes subsequently moderated to 1,600 per day in the month of April as mortgage rates moved higher."
Artificial intelligence was another topic for Nolan, seemingly a result of the broader discussions regarding the
"By embedding AI tools into these workflows, we can drive significant value by enhancing efficiency and our customers' experience, reducing risk and strengthening fraud prevention across real estate transactions," Nolan stated. "These gains come from having highly curated deep sets of transactional data to augment AI."
Here are the first quarter results from the five publicly traded title underwriters, four of which are the dominant players in the industry:
FNF returns to profitability in 1Q
FNF reported net earnings attributable to shareholders of $243 million, up from a net loss of $117 million
The title segment contributed $197 million of adjusted net earnings for the first quarter, up from $158 million one year ago.
FNF also owns a controlling interest in F&G Annuities & Life. While F&G's contribution to adjusted net earnings was flat on a dollar basis year-over-year at $80 million, FNF reduced its ownership interested to 70% from 84% during the time frame.
First quarter total revenue of $2.1 billion (minus realized gains and losses), included direct title premiums of $583 million, up 14% from the previous year; agency title premiums of $788 million, up 16%; and commercial revenue of $338 million, up 15%.
FNF beat Keefe, Bruyette & Woods' expectations on direct residential revenues, with close order volumes up 18%, compared with its 12% estimate. But "purchase closed orders remained lackluster," Bose George commented.
Total opened orders of 389,000, was up from the fourth quarter's 332,000 and the first quarter of 2025's 343,000.
Sluggish April give First American an opportunity
First American Financial also reported improved profitability
But in the fourth quarter of last year, it made $211.9 million.
At the start of the second quarter, its business is slowing down. "So far in April, open purchase orders are down 3% as the sluggish home sale trend continues," said Mark Seaton, CEO on its earnings call.
First American is considering this an opportunity. "While the residential market remains at trough levels, we are focused on rolling out our new AI-powered title and escrow platforms, which will provide greater operating leverage when the market recovers."
Seaton added he remains optimistic about First American's earnings trajectory, especially because of the commercial business. It posted record first-quarter revenue for the company.
"For the first three weeks in April, our opened commercial orders are down 4% relative to last year," he said. "But as we experienced this quarter, the fee per file matters more in commercial than the number of orders."
First American reported 182,900 direct open orders in the first quarter. This is up from 167,400 in the fourth quarter and 168,900 one year ago.
'One of the best quarters' in Stewart's history
Stewart Information Services reported first quarter net income of $17 million. While down from the fourth quarter's $36.3 million, it was much improved from $3.1 million in the first quarter of 2025.
The first quarter's financials are the ones most impacted by seasonality in the market as is, and this year residential transactions remained at historically low levels, Fred Eppinger, CEO, said on the earnings call.
"In that environment, we delivered one of the best quarters in the company's history with adjusted EPS of $0.78 and revenue growth of 28%," he continued.
However, Eppinger downgraded his forecast for the housing market in 2026. On the fourth quarter call, Stewart was expecting existing home sales to improve by 6% to 8% this year; it now foresees 3% to 5% growth.
"While we anticipate some growth in the housing market, we foresee the potential for growth to be a bit more muted this year given the broader macro and geopolitical conditions and where we have seen interest rates move as a result," he continued. "We anticipate that we will continue to maintain our business momentum in the second quarter, but we could see the residential market continue to bounce along the bottom of around 4 million existing home sales for the next quarter if ongoing geopolitical tensions prolong."
It ended the quarter with open orders of 84,708, up from 73,527 in the fourth quarter and 78,943 one year ago.
Meanwhile, on April 2, Stewart Valuation Intelligence acquired Nationwide Appraisal Network.
When asked about the deal, Eppinger referred to Stewart's capital raise in December and recounted saying at that time "that I saw some real promising interesting things that I wanted to pursue to complement our business. There's a half a dozen or so things that were quite warm that helped both in the [real estate services] area and in the direct operations area, and so that's what we're pursuing."
The NAN purchase follows the fourth quarter buy of Mortgage Contracting Services.
Shift to agency business continues at Old Republic
The title insurance unit at Old Republic International reported first quarter pretax operating income of $16.7 million, down from $65.5 million three months prior. But this was up 284.5% from $4.3 million one year ago.
While premiums from its direct business was up 6%, the agency side increased by 14%. Nearly 80% of its revenues came from title agent business, an increase of 2 percentage points year-over-year, noted Carolyn Monroe, president of the title insurance business, on ORI's earnings call.
"As we look forward to some long-awaited improvement in the residential housing market, we remain focused on operational efficiency and efforts to expand our margins," Monroe said.
The shift in where its business comes from can be seen in the order counts. It ended the first quarter with 46,900 open orders, down from 50,342 for the same period in 2025. But it was an improvement on the fourth quarter's 41,114. Including the results from its specialty insurance segment, ORI had net income of $330 million, up from $245 million last year.
Revenues rise at Investors Title
Investors Title reported net income of $6.1 million. This compared with $7.5 million in the fourth quarter and $3.2 million for the first quarter of 2025.
On a year-over-year basis, revenue rose by 13.2%. Meanwhile, Investor's net premiums written along with escrow and title-related fees increased by $5.7 million.
"We are pleased with our strong start to 2026, highlighted by solid revenue growth and improved profitability, marking our best first quarter since 2022," J. Allen Fine, chairman, said in a press release. "These results reflect both increased real estate activity and the continued success of our expansion initiatives."
