Mark Casale
Analyst · Barclays
Yes. I would say from a competitive standpoint, just in general taking a step back, the business is changing Mark. It's changing from a rate card only, relationship business to fee only. And I think a lot of the companies are struggling with that. I really do because you have; a lot of them are still using rate cards and promoting rate cards. We were at – you know, we've heard feedback from lenders directly to me that some of our competitors are trying to sell them off of the engine versus trying to use the card versus the engine. And no one that tells me they're behind on the technology. Clearly, so in terms of using a static card versus an engine, I think they're using the card to the crutch. I think a lot of the industry as we said is commission-based so people do what they are intended to do. And I think, again, I think the industry is changing. I think we took that challenge head on; it's going from relationship to fee. We invested in a technology to make sure we could price more accurately and that's using more information. Again, if it's all about fee, you better have more information than the next guy and we started that process three years ago now, and the result is in EssentEDGE kind of the next generation of it. So I do think – I think they're struggling with that. In terms of – just in terms of kind of premiums though from an Essent perspective and I know we've been asked about, I know there's been a lot of questions around premium they're compressing, but really the majority of that compression is coming from the decline in SCI, right? And also a little bit as the re-insurance ramps up. We see our premium levels, the gross premium levels stabilizing in 2022. Where it goes after that it's really a function of kind of a premium or new NIW. And Mark our premium on new NIW is been relatively flattish to the past eight quarters. I'm not sure everyone can say that. Again, what we see in the industry is a few guys, kind of chasing the market down. They go after the bid cards and there's two large lenders that bid out their product every four months, six months and folks gravitate towards that. We have not. Something that we've been involved in those types of lenders in the past and we just refuse to kind of lower our price every four months like clockwork, we don't think it's prudent in the long-term. And again, that's why were the engine is going to be more of a long-term advantage we can pick our spots. And again, it's all about unit economics, right? It's about optimizing the premium level with pricing, which I think we're doing. And we're also in terms of investment income. Always looking to increase the yield there, and then Mark, sometimes it gets that down to old fashioned managed expenses. So again, you said we took our guidance down on expenses, that's something we can control every day. We don't see that across the industry. So yes, I mean, again, I think competitively either those are the factors really driving it, but I think from an Essent perspective, again we always feel like we're going to be kind of in the middle of the pack in terms of share. And we're going to use that the engine and our analytics to try to optimize the premium for whatever share we do get.