There was $6.7 billion of new insurance written by members of the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America in March, up from $5.4 billion in February and $4.4 billion in March 2011. What makes the year-over-year gain more remarkable is that there were two additional companies writing business in that month when compared with today's business environment.
The MICA numbers for all timeframes reported here do not include activity from United Guaranty or Essent, who are not members of the trade group.
There were 32,540 applications received in March, up from 26,886 in February and 21,602 in March 2011. MICA members have $396.6 billion of primary insurance in force, a drop-off of $1.1 billion from February. The decline between January and February was $1.5 billion.
Meanwhile, the seasonal trend of seeing more new cures than new notices of delinquency continued. March's cure/default ratio was 129.6%, compared with 113.5% in February and 143.9% last March.
March saw 28,026 cures and 21,624 defaults.
