MI Woes Continue, No Recovery Seen in December

The nation's private mortgage insurers ended one of the worst years ever for the business with a whimper as December 2009 saw the smallest number of applications received for the preceding 12 months. The $5.1 billion of primary new insurance written (all but $9.5 million through the traditional channel) brought the total for 2009 to approximately $81 billion, according to the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America. For the month, mortgage insurers received just 26,284 in applications. In December 2008, the dollar volume of primary new insurance written was $7.2 billion and there were 61,597 new applications received. Primary insurance in force as of Dec. 31, 2009, is $863.4 billion, down from $952.2 billion one year prior, while primary risk-in-force is $200.7 billion, compared with $219.0 billion during the same period. New pool risk written was $10.2 billion; pool risk-in-force has declined from $8.7 billion at the end of 2008 to $7.7 billion one year later. December's cure default ratio was 64.5%, with 61,032 cures and 94,651 defaults. For last year, there were no months where there were more cures than defaults.