New Private Mortgage Insurance Written Increases But Is Still Low

The dollar volume of primary new insurance written for the private mortgage insurance companies remained relatively low in November at just under $4.9 billion but was an improvement over last month. According to data from the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America, that was higher than the low seen for the year in October (just shy of $4.8 billion). A statement from MICA said this includes HARP originations, but the group did not break out how many. Last November, MICA members wrote $5.8 billion, but this does not include figures from Radian Guaranty Inc., whose data was not included in the group's statistics until December 2008. Since that month, the industry's primary insurance in force has declined to $879.7 billion from $952.2 billion. New pool risk written was $2.5 billion for November, compared to $7.9 billion during the same month a year ago. The cure/default ratio in November, at 61.8%, was an improvement over 57% in October. There were 55,437 cures and 89,772 defaults during the latest month.