New business at MGIC Guaranty Insurance Corp. fell to the worst level in two years. Delinquency, however, was at the most favorable rate in at least more than four years.
MGIC wrote $1.5 billion in primary new insurance during February, according to monthly operational data that was released Monday.
Business was down from January, when $1.7 billion in home loan were insured.
It was also worse than in February of last year, when volume totaled $1.9 billion.
The Milwaukee-based company’s activity hasn’t been this slow since February 2012, when just $1.3 billion in policies were written.
From Jan. 1 through Feb. 28 of this year, new business amounted to $3.2 billion.
The mortgage insurer said it finished last month with 97,588 delinquent policies, fewer than 102,351 a month earlier and 133,125 a year earlier.
Mortgage Daily estimates that MGIC had 953,898 policies in force as of Feb. 28, putting the estimated delinquency rate at 10.23 percent.
Delinquency was an estimated 10.69 percent as of Jan. 31 and 13.40 percent as of Feb. 28, 2013.
Based on the oldest available data from MGIC, the delinquency rate has not been a low as last month’s rate since at least 2009.
