Private MI Dips

Members of the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America wrote $19.5 billion of private mortgage insurance in April, down 3.7% from $20.3 billion in March.Of April's total, $16.6 billion came from traditional insurance, down from $16.8 billion the previous month. Both the total volume and traditional volume results represent the industry's second-best month of the year so far. Bulk purchases fell from $3.4 billion in March to $2.9 billion in April. Application volume totaled 181,471, down 4.1% from 189,311 in March, but still well ahead of the application volume for January and February. New pool risk written amounted to $81.1 million, compared with $83.4 million in March. After two months of having more cures than defaults, the cure/default ratio once again slipped below 100%. The April ratio stood at 90.6%, with 34,872 cures and 38,490 defaults. Since July 2003, MICA data do not include information from Radian Guaranty Inc., Philadelphia, which dropped out of the trade group in a policy dispute. MICA can be found online at http://www.micanews.com.