Mortgage Insurance Volume Slips

The good times that the private mortgage insurance companies had in March did not last into April, as both dollar volume of primary new insurance and the number of applications received both declined, according to the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America.Its most recent data for its members (all private mortgage insurers with the exception of Radian), found that in April, they wrote $16.16 billion of primary new insurance, of which $12.52 billion was traditional and $3.65 billion was bulk. This is down 6% from a revised total for March of $17.18 billion (the original report was $17.15 billion). Applications fell by 14%, from 147,105 in March to 126,596 in April. A sign of how much the business has slowed is that in April 2004, the industry received 181,471applications, the second highest total in that year (behind March 2004). Defaults slightly outweighed cures in April, 35,268 compared with 34,084 respectively, for a cure/default ratio of 96.6%. The trade group can be found on the Internet at http://www.micanews.com.