United Guaranty Corp., the mortgage insurance subsidiary of American International Group, had operating income of $8 million in the first quarter, down from $14 million for the same period in 2011.
The unit is among the top two private mortgage insurers in the U.S. with new insurance written of $6.5 billion during the quarter, up from $2.5 billion in 1Q11, which the company said is due to its risk-based pricing strategy as well as market share gains as two of its competitors stopped writing new business at the end of last August.
As for its competitors, Radian also reported $6.5 billion in NIW during the quarter, while MGIC had $4.2 billion and Genworth's U.S. operations had $3 billion (its international segment did approximately $12 billion, of which $8 billion came from Australia). Newcomer Essent Guaranty recently disclosed it did $2 billion of NIW through April 30.
Meanwhile, also aiding UGC's results was the company's efforts working with lenders to resolve aged delinquent accounts. The company contacted mortgage lenders about 20,000 of these accounts and got responses for over 14,000. These responses resulted in paid or denied claims, the coverage being rescinded or the loan curing.
