Mortgage Insurers Still Seeing More Cures than Defaults

For the second consecutive month, members of the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America reported more primary insurance cures than defaults for March 2010. Mortgage insurers had 77,909 cures and 63,126 defaults for a ratio of 123.4%. This compares with 80,758 cures and 68,675 defaults in February for a ratio of 117.6% and 69,931 cures and 84,042 defaults for a ratio of 83.2% in March 2009. March was also the best month of the first quarter 2010 in terms of both applications received and dollar volume of primary new insurance written. Including policies written for loans refinanced in the HARP program, MICA members had $4.5 billion written in the traditional channel and $400,000 in the bulk channel, vs. $3.6 billion total in February and $9.8 billion in the traditional channel and $9.7 million in the bulk channel in March 2009. Primary insurance in force continues to decline, going from $844.4 billion in February to $828.6 billion in March. There was $1.8 million of new pool risk written in March; total pool risk in force at the end of the first quarter was $7.4 billion.