Mortgage insurers flat versus 2Q23 — and that's good news

The six private mortgage insurers had the smallest year-over-year decline in new business in almost three years during the second quarter of 2024, with all underwriters coming in with similar market shares.

During the quarter, the industry produced $79.8 billion of new insurance written, a 2% drop from one year ago, when they did $81.7 billion, according to data compiled by Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

The last time the six companies reported annual increase of NIW was in the second quarter of 2021. Since then, largely in conjunction with the decline in mortgage origination volumes, NIW dropped off by double-digit percentages for each period until now.

Compared with the first quarter, NIW rose 37%, from $58.2 billion.

Meanwhile, in an industry where maintaining market share has become volatile in the era of “black box” risk-based pricing, all of the underwriters were remarkably similar in their production during the second quarter.

The gap between the No. 1 underwriter and the No. 6 was $1.4 billion. In the first quarter, it was $3.2 billion, in the fourth quarter, it was $2.1 billion (on NIW of $59 billion) and the year prior, the gap was $5.4 billion.

Here is a look at the second quarter earnings reports at the six active underwriters: