Private MI Continues Decline

Business at the nation's private mortgage insurance firms continued to shrink in November, as the dollar volume of primary new insurance written declined by over 5% from the previous month's level and the number of new applications fell by over 12%, according to data from members of the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America.In October, the group's members (all the players in the industry except Radian) wrote $17.6 billion of primary new insurance. That fell to $16.7 billion one month later. Traditional primary insurance written fell during the period from $13.6 billion to $13.3 billion. Meanwhile the number of applications fell from 142,087 to 124,731, the second-worst total of the year, and an indication that the results will not improve when December's numbers are reported. New pool risk written increased from $21.6 million in October to $39.5 million in November. There was a slight improvement in delinquencies, as the ratio increased from 73.9% in October to 84.2% in November. There were 36,237 cures and 43,050 defaults during November. MICA can be found online at http://www.micanews.com.