MICA: June Best Month of '04 for MI

June was the best month of the year in dollar volume for the companies that are members of the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America.In that month, these firms did $21.5 billion in primary new insurance written, up 10% from May's $19.3 billion. By category, the companies wrote $17.75 billion of traditional insurance (up from $16.7 billion in May) and $3.8 billion of bulk insurance (up from $2.6 billion). These were the highest totals in both categories so far this year. Application volume increased by 10.5% in June to 169,220. The best months for applications this year were March (189,311) and April (181,471). New pool risk written in June totaled $131.9 million, up from May's $85.5 million. The cure/default ratio continued to decline, from 86.6% in May to 76.6% in June, the second-lowest it has been this year. There were 32,346 cures and 42,208 defaults. MICA has six members: Genworth Financial (formerly GE Mortgage Insurance Co.), Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corp., The PMI Group (including its CMG joint venture), Republic Mortgage Insurance Co. (a subsidiary of Old Republic Corp.), Triad Mortgage Insurance Co., and United Guaranty (a subsidiary of American International Group). Radian Guaranty discontinued its MICA membership in July 2003 and no longer provides statistics to the group. MICA can be found online at http://www.micanews.com.