There was nearly $5 billion in primary new insurance in January written by the members of the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America, down from $5.8 billion in December.
Last January MICA members did $6.4 billion in NIW, but at that time, United Guaranty Corp., PMI and Republic Mortgage Insurance Co. were members of the group; the latter two were also still active originators, a status they maintained through August.
RMIC is the most recent dropout from MICA, as it is becoming less and less likely that parent company Old Republic International will be able to reenter the private mortgage insurance underwriting business.
Since RMIC has been operating in run-off, its departure had little, if any, effect on the NIW data between December and January.
Recent data provided by UG plus information compiled by National Mortgage News based on fourth quarter earnings reports shows that company as No. 1 in market share for NIW in the last two quarters of last year.
UG stopped providing data to MICA after January 2011, while PMI stopped in September.
Without RMIC being counted in the data, primary insurance in force for MICA members is now just $399 billion at the end of January. In December, when the data did include RMIC, insurance in force was $468 billion.
Another area where RMIC no longer contributing data has an impact is in the cure/default numbers.
MICA members reported 23,728 new cures and 29,348 notices of default received in January, for a ratio of 80.9%.
In December, the ratio was 70.9% with 27,301 cures and 38,481 defaults; while in January 2011, the ratio was 78.6% with 50,820 cures and 64,687 defaults.
