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Major Mortgage Insurers See Margins Slip: MICA Report

In bad news for mortgage insurers, the big four U.S. companies saw their profit margins shrink year-over-year by more than a quarter in September, according to the ""Mortgage Insurance Companies of America"":http://www.privatemi.com/index.cfm (MICA).

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The trade group represents insurers ""Genworth Mortgage Insurance Corp."":http://mortgageinsurance.genworth.com/, ""Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corp."":http://www.mgic.com/, ""Radian Guaranty Inc."":http://www.radian.biz/page?name=HomePage, and ""Republic Mortgage Insurance Company"":http://www.rmic.com/Pages/default.aspx, from which it culled the data for a monthly statistical report.

Insurers underwrote $4.9 billion in risk for mortgage lenders last month, substantially down from $6.9 billion in profit recorded by the trade group in September last year.

Loans defaulted at a higher clip than cures, with the latter

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falling to 38,719 in September from 65,481 over the same month last year. Loan cures fell to 31,129 from 57,729 over the same time frame.

MICA reported a year-over-year plunge in primary new insurance by dollar volume over August, with numbers for new conventional loans falling from $6.4 billion last year to $5.6 billion this year.

Borrowers who relied on private mortgage insurance to purchase or refinance their homes amounted to 30,702 over August, down from 39,503 seen last year.

Doug Byrne, a spokesperson for MICA, could not be immediately reached for comment.

The uptick in reported profit and underwritten policies reflects a series of ongoing problems for the industry at large.

Last week Standard & Poor's downgraded credit ratings for Old Republic, to which Republic Mortgage belongs as a subsidiary.

The ratings action follows an ""announcement"":http://www.rmic.com/inthenews/Announcements/Pages/AnnouncementDetails.aspx?ItemID=86&backlink=/inthenews&linktext=Back+to+In+The+News by the company that it would cease underwriting new insurance commitments in August.

Earlier this fall state regulators in Arizona shut down two units owned by PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. and barred it from any further underwriting activity.

The trade group said that it represented the embattled insurer until last month.

About Author: Ryan Schuette

Ryan Schuette is a journalist, cartoonist, and social entrepreneur with several years of experience in real-estate news, international reporting, and business management. He currently lives in the Washington, D.C., area, where he freelances for DS News and MReport.
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