New business at Radian Guaranty Inc. improved for the third consecutive month, while the delinquency rate has improved 17 months in a row.
The Philadelphia-based mortgage insurance company reported Wednesday that it wrote $4.56 billion in primary new insurance during May.
Activity at Radian came in higher than in April, when $4.12 billion in primary new insurance was written.
Based on the oldest Radian operational data available from July 2010, last month was the best month on record.
Business has been better each month since February, a month when $3.29 billion in mortgages were insured.
In the same month last year, volume totaled $2.73 billion.
From Jan. 1 through May 31, Radian generated $19.59 billion in new business.
The mortgage insurer reported that its ending primary delinquent inventory fell to 79,344 loans from 81,577 at the end of April.
A year earlier, 99,694 policies were delinquent.
Using an estimate of 790,775 total policies outstanding, delinquency was an estimated 10.03 percent as of May 31, retreating from an estimated 10.37 percent at the end of the previous month.
The estimated delinquency rate was 13.61 percent at the same point last year.
The last time the delinquency rate increased at Radian was in September 2011, when the rate was 15.21 percent.
