Sanford A. Ibrahim
Analyst · FBR
Thank you, Emily. Thanks to all for joining us and for your interest in Radian. Today, I will first provide a few highlights from our fourth quarter and full-year 2012 results then I will focus my comments on the priorities we set for 2012. First, how we, at Radian, continue to grow our mortgage insurance franchise and capture a larger amount of new high-quality business. Second, what we're doing to mitigate our mortgage insurance legacy losses. Third, how we are reducing our risk exposure in financial guaranty to provide an important capital support to the mortgage insurance business. And fourth, how we are positioning Radian for success as the housing market recovers and for a return to MI operating profitability this year. Bob will then cover the details of our financial position, and I will provide a few closing comments before we open the call to your questions. Earlier today, we reported a net loss for the fourth quarter 2012 of $177 million or $1.34 per diluted share. For the full-year, the net loss was $452 million or $3.41 per diluted share. At December 31, 2012, our book value per share was $5.51. The fourth quarter net loss was driven in part by an increase to our IBNR, a component of our large reserve that consists primarily of estimated denial reinstatements. Bob will discuss this impact to our incurred losses in more detail. It is also important to note that the typical seasonal default and cure patterns that we mentioned in our third quarter call, as an expectation for the fourth quarter, did not materialize, which is a positive indicator of our improving portfolio. Additionally, in January, new defaults were down 28% from January 2012; and cures were 109% of our new defaults. The January 2013 new default rate was the lowest monthly rate we have seen since December 2005. Radian Guaranty's risk-to-capital ratio was 20.8:1 at year-end 2012, reflecting an improvement from 21.5:1 at year-end 2011. And importantly, we now expect Radian Guaranty to remain below 25:1 throughout 2013. This will include, if necessary, contributions from currently available Holding Company funds. Now, let me turn to the topics that we believe are top of mind. First, we continue to write more new high-quality mortgage insurance business that can generate strong returns. We wrote $11.7 billion in new business for the fourth quarter, and $37.1 billion for 2012. We wrote an increasing volume of new MI business each consecutive quarter in 2012 and ended the year with more than double the amount of new business than 2011. And we continued our momentum in January with our second largest NIW month in the past 5 years of $4 billion, which compares to only $2 billion written in January 2011. We look forward to continued strong volume this year, and we expect our total NIW in 2013 to surpass our 2012 volume. From 2009 to the end of this January, we wrote a total of $85 billion of new business, creating an impressive earnings ramp that we expect will lead us towards future profitability. Our sales strategy for bringing in business, both from existing and new customers, continues to be successful. In 2012, more than 325 new customers chose Radian as their MI partner, and those relationships mean new opportunity, as 21% of our mortgage insurance business in 2012 and 25% in January came from customers new to Radian within the last 2 years, with our pipeline of prospective new customers remaining very strong. In the last 2 years, mortgage originations have been driven by high volumes of refinanced activity, and at some point in the near future, the market is expected to transition from refi to purchase. It is important to note that the MI penetration for purchased loans is significantly higher than it is for refi loans, and that purchases tend to be more skewed towards monthly versus single premium MI. For the past 2 quarters, I have mentioned the outstanding teams at Radian that helped to drive our NIW success, which include sales and training. Today, I would like to mention a group that is working incredibly hard behind the scenes: our underwriters, operations and customer service teams that supported our outstanding, quarter-by-quarter NIW growth in 2012. They help make it even easier to do business with Radian, which is key to our success. In 2012, our customer care team fielded 50% more calls than they did in 2011. Our service center underwriters were busy processing 125% more applications in 2012 than in 2011, and our customers were able to quickly and easily access Radian's rates using their Android, iPhone or iPad. The 3 new members of our sales team announced last week is another example of our continued confidence and commitment to an ongoing investment in our franchise, which will continue in 2013. Now turning back to our mortgage insurance book of business in Slide 19 on our webcast presentation, it is important to note that as of the fourth quarter, the 2009 to 2012 books grew to nearly 45% of our primary risk in force, and the most problematic 2006 and 2007 books are now down to under 26%. We continue to expect that, given the volume of new business we write each quarter, by the second quarter of this year, our book of business written after 2008 will be larger than the book written in 2008 and prior. And the latest HARP program continues to improve the credit profile of our legacy book. More than 9% of our risk in force has completed the HARP refinance, and this, combined with our newer quality book of business, represents a strong portfolio that is now larger than our legacy book, representing 54% of our total primary mortgage insurance risk in force. This improved composition of our mortgage insurance portfolio is one of the primary drivers of our expected return to MI operating profitability this year. You can already see the increasing impact of this new business on Slide 18 on our webcast presentation, where the 2009 and subsequent vintages are clearly providing a larger, positive contribution to the overall book. Additionally, our gross total primary insurance in force is now growing again, and increased from $126.2 billion at year-end 2011 to $140.4 billion at year-end 2012, resulting in our MI premiums earned, net of ceded reinsurance premiums, increasing from $681 million in 2011 to $702 million in 2012. Second, we continue to focus on mitigating losses in our mortgage insurance portfolio. The improvement in our portfolio of defaulted loans continues, with a steady decline of 2% from the third quarter and 16% year-over-year, as you can see on Slide 22. And the default rate on our primary book fell further in the fourth quarter to 12.1%. As we work through our legacy book of business, we maintained $3.1 billion in loss reserves, which represents more than 3x the claims we expect to pay this year. And our primary reserve for default increased in the fourth quarter to $29,510, our highest level ever, up from $26,007 at the end of 2011; and $23,374 at the end of 2010. You will find the details of our rescission and denial activity on Slide 20 of our webcast presentation. These rates continue to remain elevated, as we review claims where errors in underwriting are common. We also continue to review each claim carefully to ensure that the servicing standards referenced in our master policy have been followed. Our average total claims paid in 2012 was $48,700, down from $51,900 in 2011, in part due to our ongoing effort to curtail claim payments based on servicing negligence. What is most important to remember is that we continue to pay appropriate claims, while enforcing our rights on poorly underwritten, fraudulent or negligently-serviced loans. Third, our Financial Guaranty business continues to serve as an important and unique source of capital for Radian Guaranty. Our Financial Guaranty team in New York remains focused on surveilling our existing exposure and pursuing opportunities for commutations and risk reductions. We successfully reduced our net par exposure from a peak of $115 billion in June 2008 when Radian Asset stopped writing new business to $34 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012. This represents a decline of our total Financial Guaranty risk exposure of 71%, which includes several successes in 2012. In January, we announced a transaction with Assured Guaranty that commuted a $13.8 billion reinsurance portfolio and ceded an additional $1.8 billion of public finance business. This added $100 million to Radian Guaranty's statutory capital in 2012. In April, we significantly improved the credit profile of our Financial Guaranty book by commuting our entire CDO of ABS exposure and a significant portion of our riskiest trust exposure. In May, Radian Asset released $55 million of contingency reserves with the approval of the New York Department of Financial Services. In November, we agreed to the commutation of our remaining reinsurance risk from FGIC. This commutation was completed in January, and consisted of an $822 million reinsurance portfolio. Through actions taken in 2012, we successfully reduced our public finance exposure by 56%, including nearly 90% of our exposure to Jefferson County, Alabama. Similarly, our structured finance exposure was reduced by 50%, including nearly half of our CDO book. As you can see on Slide 30, our remaining $13.8 billion corporate CDO exposure matures over the next 4 years, with 35% maturing by the end of 2013. Finally, last week, Radian Asset received regulatory approval to release another $61 million of contingency reverses, which will benefit Radian Guaranty's statutory capital position. While we had anticipated the reserve release and included it in our risk-to-capital projections for 2013, the amount released was slightly higher than we had projected. Today, the total cumulative release of contingency reserves related to the direct book since 2008 now stands at $425 million. Also, since 2008, Radian Asset has paid Radian Guaranty a total of $384 million in dividends and expects to pay another dividend of approximately $35 million to Radian Guaranty this year. As of February, approximately $230 million in contingency reserves remains to support Radian Asset's existing risks. This represents an opportunity over time to add to Radian Guaranty's statutory capital as the exposure is ultimately reduced and contingency reserves are released. As of December 31, 2012, Radian Asset maintains statutory surplus of $1.1 billion. Fourth, while some challenges and volatility still remain in the economy and in our legacy portfolio, there is now broad data from multiple sources, indicating a solid recovery in the housing market after many years of declines. Based on our performance and trends, we continue to project a return to marginal level of MI operating profitability in 2013, and look forward to a return to more normalized profitability over the next couple of years. Our industry continues to slowly but steadily rake in share from the FHA, which presents another opportunity to increase our new business volume. Penetration for our industry has doubled over the past 2 years and increased nearly 2.5 points in 2012 alone. Additionally, acting FHA Commissioner, Carol Galante, announced another price increase for the FHA, effective April 1, stating that the decision was designed, in part to, "continue encouraging the return of private capital to the housing market." The FHA also decided to remove the benefit of cancellation from its coverage, which we feel is another competitive advantage for private mortgage insurance. Meantime, on Capitol Hill, we continue to hear resounding support in Congress for a larger role for private capital, including private mortgage insurance in the future of housing finance. This theme echoed throughout the financial services committee hearings last week, where the role of FHA was questioned and its financial condition challenged. This sentiment, along with the FHA's recent actions, should help our industry continue to return to a more traditional and sustainable balance between government and private mortgage insurance. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Bob for details of our financial position.