July Best Month Since Recovery Started for MICA Members

The members of the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America did $13.0 billion of primary new insurance written in July, the group’s best month in the housing recovery era.

Because the membership of the organization has fluctuated over years, it is hard to do comparisons to prior periods; currently only Genworth, Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corp. and Radian Guaranty are members.

MICA also includes Home Affordable Refinance Program coverage in its primary new insurance written data, while industry members in their own releases consider it a modification of existing coverage.

For June, MICA members did $12.3 billion and in July 2012, they did $10.1 billion. Every month in 2013 so far has seen MICA members improving volume, a sign that between higher pricing for Federal Housing Administration insurance and the MI industry’s own marketing efforts, the product is continuing to make increased penetration in the marketplace.

Another sign of the success of industry efforts is that primary insurance in force grew by $4.2 billion during the month, to $413 billion from June’s $408.8 billion. It is the largest month-to-month gain among MICA members since the recovery started.

The only bad news is that the cure/default ratio declined for the fourth consecutive month, to 78.2% from June’s 82.1% (although it is better than July 2012’s 73.2%).

There were 17,156 cures and 21,930 new notices of default in July.