Earnings Call Transcript - ESNT Q1 2024

Philip Stefano, Investor Relations

Thank you, Rob. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our call. Joining me today are Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO; and David Weinstock, Chief Financial Officer. Also on hand for the Q&A portion of the call is Chris Curran, President of Essent Guaranty. Our press release, which contains Essent's financial results for the first quarter of 2024, was issued earlier today and is available on our website at essentgroup.com. Our press release includes non-GAAP financial measures that may be discussed during today's call. A complete description of these measures and the reconciliation to GAAP may be found in Exhibit O of our press release. Prior to getting started, I would like to remind participants that today's discussions are being recorded and will include the use of forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, projections and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially. For a discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please review the cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements in today's press release, the risk factors included in our Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 16, 2024, and any other reports and registration statements filed with the SEC, which are also available on our website. Now let me turn the call over to Mark.

Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO

Thanks, Phil, and good morning, everyone. Earlier today, we released our first quarter 2024 financial results. Our results continue to benefit from the favorable credit performance of our insured portfolio and the impact of higher rates on both persistency and investment earnings. Given the state of the economy and higher rates, we are encouraged by the resilience of housing and the labor market. Over the longer term, our view remains constructive. We believe that improvement in supply/demand imbalances, along with favorable demographics, will continue to support housing growth, which is positive for our franchise. And now for our results. For the first quarter of 2024, we reported net income of $182 million compared to $171 million a year ago. On a diluted per share basis, we earned $1.70 for the first quarter compared to $1.59 a year ago. On an annualized basis, our return on average equity was 14%. As of March 31, our U.S. mortgage insurance in force was $238 billion, a 3% increase versus a year ago. Our 12-month persistency on March 31 was 87%, the same as last quarter, and over 70% of our in-force portfolio has a note rate of 5.5% or lower. We expect that the current level of rates should support elevated persistency throughout 2024. Credit quality of our insurance in force remains strong, with a weighted average FICO of 746 and a weighted average original LTV of 93%. Overall, we remain pleased with the quality of the business that we are writing. Also, we anticipate that embedded home equity within the existing book should mitigate potential claims in the current housing environment. On the mortgage insurance front, we continue to focus on activating new lenders and strengthening our operating infrastructure. This includes enhancing our proprietary scoring engine, EssentEDGE, by integrating additional data sources. Our lenders benefit from the amount of data that we analyze in delivering our best rate to borrowers while also enabling us to optimize our unit economics. Given the challenging mortgage origination market, we believe that having access to EssentEDGE is an advantage for lenders and their borrowers. At Essent Re, we continue to leverage our mortgage credit and reinsurance expertise in generating earnings for the Essent franchise. As of March 31, Essent Re's third-party risk in force was approximately $2.3 billion, up 10% from the first quarter of 2023. Our title operations incurred a pretax loss of approximately $4 million in the first quarter, similar to the third quarter and fourth quarter of 2023. With the post-acquisition integration complete, we have begun the build-out of Essent Title, which should enable us to leverage our strong operational infrastructure, lender network and risk analytics. Cash and investments as of March 31 were $5.8 billion, and our new money yield in the first quarter was approximately 5%. The annualized investment yield for the first quarter was 3.7%, up from 3.4% a year ago. New money rates have largely held stable over the past several quarters. We continue to operate from a position of strength with $5.2 billion in GAAP equity, access to $1.4 billion in excess of loss reinsurance and over $1 billion of available holding company liquidity. With a trailing 12-month mortgage insurance underwriting margin of 76%, our franchise remains well positioned from an earnings, cash flow and balance sheet perspective. In the first quarter of 2024, we entered into a quota share transaction with a panel of highly rated reinsurers to provide forward protection for our 2024 business. We are encouraged by the strong interest from the reinsurance market in supporting our program. Looking forward, we will continue executing upon our reinsurance strategy to mitigate earnings volatility during economic cycles while also providing capital relief. During the quarter, we were pleased that S&P upgraded the financial strength ratings of Essent Guaranty and Essent Re to single A-, and that Moody's affirmed Essent Guaranty's A3 rating and raised its rating outlook to positive. We believe these actions reflect the significant enhancements made by our industry in transforming mortgage insurance into a sustainable and through-the-cycle franchise. Given our strong financial performance and capital position, we continue to take a measured approach to capital distribution. Our goal is to balance capital deployment opportunities to generate incremental revenues while optimizing capital distributions and shareholder returns. Now let me turn the call over to Dave.

David Weinstock, Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. Let me review our results for the quarter in a little more detail. For the first quarter, we earned $1.70 per diluted share compared to $1.64 last quarter and $1.59 in the first quarter a year ago. Our U.S. mortgage insurance portfolio ended March 31, 2024, with insurance in force of $238.5 billion, essentially flat compared to December 31 and 3% higher compared to the first quarter a year ago. Persistency at March 31 was 86.9%, unchanged from the fourth quarter. Net premium earned for the first quarter was $246 million and included $17.8 million of premiums earned by Essent Re on our third-party business and $15.3 million of premiums earned by the title operations. The base average premium rate for the U.S. mortgage insurance portfolio for the first quarter was 41 basis points and the net average premium rate was 36 basis points for the first quarter, both increasing 1 basis point from last quarter. Net investment income increased $1.5 million or 3% to $52.1 million in the first quarter of 2024 compared to last quarter due primarily to higher balances and continuing to invest at higher yields in the book yield of our existing portfolio. Other income for the first quarter was $3.7 million compared to $6.4 million last quarter. The largest component of the decrease was the change in fair value of embedded derivatives in certain of our third-party reinsurance agreements. In the first quarter, we recorded a $1.9 million decrease in the fair value of these embedded derivatives compared to a $412,000 increase recorded last quarter. The provision for loss and loss adjustment expenses was $9.9 million in the first quarter compared to $19.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2023 and a benefit of $180,000 in the first quarter a year ago. At March 31, the default rate on the U.S. mortgage insurance portfolio was 1.72%, down 8 basis points from 1.80% at December 31, 2023, largely due to favorable cure activity on prior year defaults. Other underwriting and operating expenses in the first quarter were $57.4 million and included $11.8 million of title expenses. Expenses for the first quarter also include title premiums retained by agents of $9.5 million, which were reported separately on our consolidated income statement. Our consolidated expense ratio was 27% this quarter. Our expense ratio, excluding title, which is a non-GAAP measure, was 20% this quarter. A description of our expense ratio, excluding title and the reconciliation to GAAP may be found in Exhibit O of our press release. We now estimate that other underwriting and operating expenses, excluding our title operations will be approximately $185 million for the full year 2024. As Mark noted, our holding company liquidity remains strong and includes $400 million of undrawn revolver capacity under our committed credit facility. At March 31, we had $425 million of term loan outstanding with a weighted average interest rate of 7.06%, down from 7.11% at December 31. At March 31, 2024, our debt-to-capital ratio was 8%. At March 31, Essent Guaranty's PMIERs efficiency ratio, excluding the 0.3 COVID factor, remained strong at 170%, with $1.4 billion in excess available assets. During the first quarter, Essent Guaranty had a dividend of $45 million to its U.S. holding company. Based on unassigned surplus at March 31, the U.S. mortgage insurance companies can pay additional ordinary dividends of $331 million in 2024. At quarter end, the combined U.S. mortgage insurance business statutory capital was $3.5 billion with a risk-to-capital ratio of 10:1. Note that statutory capital includes $2.4 billion of contingency reserves at March 31. For the last 12 months, the U.S. mortgage insurance business has grown statutory capital by $246 million, while at the same time paying $250 million of dividends to our U.S. holding company. During the first quarter, Essent Re paid a dividend of $37.5 million to Essent Group. Also in the quarter, Essent Group paid cash dividends totaling $29.6 million to shareholders, and we repurchased 97,000 shares for $5 million under the authorization approved by our Board in October 2023. Now let me turn the call back over to Mark.

Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO

Thanks, Dave. In closing, we are pleased with our first quarter results as Essent continues to generate high-quality earnings, while our balance sheet and liquidity remain strong. These results demonstrate the strength of our business model and how Essent is uniquely positioned within the current macroeconomic environment. With title now being part of the Essent franchise, I'm very proud of the entire Essent team as we remain focused on providing best-in-class service and value to our mortgage insurance and title customers. We continue to believe that Essent is well positioned within the U.S. housing finance as we further our franchise and mission to support affordable and sustainable homeownership. Now let's get to your questions. Operator?

Operator, Operator

Your first question comes from Terry Ma from Barclays.

Terry Ma, Analyst

So your NIW was lower Q-over-Q. And it looks like you lost a little bit of share. So anything to call out with respect to pricing or just the environment overall?

Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO

Terry, no, not really. I mean I think you're relatively new that covering us. So it's kind of like a broken record with us. I mean market share really kind of always ebbs and flows quarter to quarter. I think longer term, our goal is always to be kind of in that 15% to 16% share. That's really how you can optimize our unit economics. So certain quarters were a little bit lower. I would note that our gross premium yield has actually risen a bit in the first quarter. Some of that is from a pricing perspective. Given the small market, it's probably not the time to reach for share, and you rent share anyway, you don't really own it. It's quarter to quarter. But I think kind of from a unit economic basis, with the increased yield, we were probably increasing price a little bit more than others throughout 2023. That's probably caused for a little bit of lower share, but there's not a big gap between kind of the top share and the lower share in this type of market.

Terry Ma, Analyst

Got it. That makes sense. And then if I look at the rate of increase year-over-year in new notices, it's actually been pretty consistent the last 4 quarters. So I assume the macro outlook and employment picture stays pretty similar. Is there anything to think about in how the vintage curve season can make that rate higher or lower going forward?

Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO

I can start. Sure, as the book matures, remember that 42% of our book is from 2020 and 2021, so peak defaults typically occur in the 3- to 5-year range. You might see some seasoning and an uptick in defaults, but I'm not particularly concerned about that vintage due to the embedded home equity we have. Yes, you could see a small increase. Overall, considering about 800,000 loans and roughly 14,000 defaults, I think we feel quite confident about credit. As mentioned, credit is the primary concern for the franchise. Looking at our forecast and unit economics, everything seems relatively stable. The gross premium yield is solid, we've managed expenses well, and investment income has provided a boost. Credit remains the most volatile aspect, but we feel more positive about it given the quality of our portfolio and the changes in the industry over the past 5 or 6 years, along with our ability to mitigate that risk.

Terry Ma, Analyst

Got it. That's helpful. And maybe I would just indulge in one more. The cures to new notices ratio was seasonally higher this quarter. As we look out for the rest of the year, should we expect a similar seasonality to play out as we saw in 2023 for that ratio?

David Weinstock, Chief Financial Officer

Terry, it's Dave Weinstock. In general, I would say that we are starting to see a little bit of return to the normal seasonality pattern that we saw prior to the pandemic. So in general, specifically in the first and second quarters and generally through February through April, May time frame, we generally see more cure activity. And then in the second half of the year, we start to see that wane a little bit and a modest increase in defaults. And we're expecting that pattern to kind of play out in 2024.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Doug Harter from UBS.

Douglas Harter, Analyst

Mark, you talked about being a little more reserved in the amount of capital you're returning to shareholders for possible organic deployment or other opportunities. Can you just talk about what opportunities you see to maybe increase the pace of capital deployment just given the strong capital generation you have right now?

Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO

Yes, Doug, that's a really interesting question. To provide some context for everyone on the call and for our investors, we maintain a mentality focused on retaining and investing our capital, which is different from some of our peers, and that's perfectly fine. We're generating significant capital through our core business, which is performing well. Our approach is measured; we plan to invest strategically. Regarding capital distribution, we have a solid strategy for dividends that is tied to the yield on our book value per share. As that value increased by about 13% to 14% last year, our dividend also grew by a similar percentage. In terms of buybacks, we have a structured approach and are cautious about valuations, which is why our buyback activity in the first quarter was lower, largely due to the stock price. As book value per share increases, the buybacks will increase accordingly based on how we structure our 10b5 plan. We are actively exploring investment opportunities, but that doesn’t always mean we are making immediate decisions. I believe that investing requires significant effort, and we won’t just wait for bankers to provide us with options. Our team focused on corporate development and our Essent Ventures Group is strong and expanding. We evaluate a wide range of opportunities, including many fund of funds, while also holding some direct investments, one of which was crucial for our recent title acquisition. Timing capital deployment with available opportunities can be challenging; it’s not merely a quarterly consideration. We see this capital as a luxury rather than a burden, and we're prepared to seize opportunities as they arise. If we find ourselves unable to take action, we will return the capital to our shareholders. Ultimately, our aim is to enhance shareholder value, which is more complex than simply looking at quarterly results.

Douglas Harter, Analyst

Do you have any updates on the progress of the title and whether it can start to ramp up or be utilized for capital?

Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO

Yes, in terms of title, as I mentioned when we first acquired it, this is likely a 12- to 18-month build-out. We're 9 months into it, and I believe things are progressing well from a build-out standpoint. We're effectively integrating the Essent framework into the title side, utilizing our expertise in IT, risk, finance, and legal. There's a lot of work involved in this process. Similarly, we began developing MI in 2009 and only reached break-even by the fourth quarter of 2012. These initiatives require time. I'm optimistic as we start to onboard new talent and transition some team members from the MI side. I genuinely feel that our team is beginning to come together, which is why we mentioned that we're starting to expand Essent title. We will begin to utilize our lenders through our Essent Lender Services, which is a title and settlement services business covering all 50 states, primarily focused on refinancing, especially in a declining market. The agency services aim specifically at title agents in certain regions, which are relatively small markets. We are beginning to reduce the number of agents as we gain insight into the unit economics of smaller agents compared to larger ones, and we plan to develop that aspect further over time. It's still in the early stages. One advantage is that this initiative requires relatively little capital, making it capital-light compared to mortgage insurance.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Soham Bhonsle from BTIG.

Soham Bhonsle, Analyst

Mark, I was looking at your NIW stratification by FICO bucket. And what's interesting to me is like your 760 FICO mix has gone up, call it, 500 basis points year-over-year. Your base rate, like, as you noted, has ticked up slightly. And I know the base rate is on the insurance in force. But I'm wondering if you've seen the ability to find pockets of just higher pricing with the use of EssentEDGE without maybe taking that incremental risk out there?

Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO

Yes, absolutely. I think we have. We're really starting to see EssentEDGE become a differentiator. To clarify, it's not a pricing engine; EssentEDGE is a proprietary scoring engine. We have the FICO score and the EDGE score, and we're able to identify differences between them. A borrower with a higher EDGE score than FICO will likely receive a better price than the current market rate, which means we can win that loan, and the opposite is also true. We see areas of value, especially with some of the higher loan-to-values and higher debt-to-income ratios, which may have some macroeconomic influences, but we are definitely observing this trend. And I think that's good. That's why we said it in the script. I think for all lenders having Essent part of the rotation really is a win for them. And I'll give you a good example, and we had one lender that we're probably 10% of their business, and they came to us and said, 'Hey, you guys are only 10%, our other MIs are stepping up and they really have increased share, like what are you guys doing?' And we were able to go back and point out to them that we were probably the best price around some of the DTIs and LTVs that the other competitors would probably more flat and I would say, static pricing weren't able to take advantage of. And I think once they were educated around that, I think they were quite happy. So again, we're here, we're always there to give our gas price to each borrower. It's not necessarily the lowest price. So if another MI has a different, I would say, a way to or a liking of a certain segment that's great. That's great for the borrower, it's great for the lender, everyone wins.

Soham Bhonsle, Analyst

Okay. Great. And maybe I wanted to get your updated thoughts on a topic that has not come up in a while which is M&A. It just seems like we're in a market today where the industry is in excess capital position and limited growth because of just where the origination market is at least in the medium term. Credit is still pretty good and should be good outside of some big decline in HPA or unemployment. So that capital return seems to be sustainable as well. But I'm curious if there's a case to be made here that there's potentially other parties that might be attracted to this capital and want to sort of redeploy this for a higher, better use long term.

Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO

Yes, that's a good question. There are two ways to approach this, both in the context of industry consolidation and in light of a slower market. However, I don't believe the market will remain slow for much longer. When we consider demographics, particularly immigration, we saw a significant population increase last year, with nearly 4 million people, and over 3 million of those were new immigrants. They are entering the workforce in sectors like construction, hospitality, and healthcare, all of which contribute to future homeownership. Therefore, I see this period more as a temporary pause in growth rather than a complete halt to growth. The industry is mature, and while there is still some growth, it is not as robust as it was five years ago. This situation resembles a bit of consolidation, where companies merge and reduce costs. It is likely that we will see more of this in the coming years, depending on interest rates and growth trends. Additionally, external players may enter the market, especially given the changes in the capital model and potential capital advantages for large property and casualty companies. The consistent returns from Essent and the broader industry may attract larger mortgage insurers. So it wouldn't be surprising to see one or two mortgage insurers become divisions of larger property and casualty companies in the future. However, it takes time. There's still a lot of history to consider. We'll discuss with investors the great financial crisis that occurred 16 years ago, which is quite a while back. We've been public for over 10 years and have achieved a compounded book value per share of 18%. Shareholder returns have been quite good. Consistently, we've faced the notion that we haven't really experienced a recession, and then in 2020, with unemployment reaching double digits, our default rates surged to 5%, yet Essent made money and performed well. Rates decreased, new insurance written increased, and insurance in force grew, allowing Essent to thrive. Rates start to go high, NIW falls, persistency increases, yield increases, Essent does well. That at some point, it takes a while, Soham. That's going to get noticed. It just takes time. And sometimes you have to almost earn your way through it. But over time, I think people will understand kind of the strengths of the business model and how it's improved so much over the past 10 years, both regulatory, with the advent of QM, the changes that the GSEs have made, which have been quite significant with the strengthening of DU and LP, the improvements around QC, the addition of forbearance and how it helps borrowers add in the kind of the ability of the industry to change pricing the way we have and able to change pricing almost on a dime, which 5 years ago with rate cards took 6 months. The introduction of reinsurance has significantly transformed our approach. It’s a completely different model now. I believe that the sustainability and consistency of our earnings will become apparent to external observers over time. We have a core group of investors who understand this well, and they have supported us for many years. They are satisfied to watch us grow our book value per share every quarter.

Soham Bhonsle, Analyst

Yes. That makes sense. And if I could just 1 on title. I know there's been a lot of chatter around just title costs and some of these pilots that the GSEs are trying to implement here. I would love to maybe just get your thoughts on the topic and maybe what you're hearing from folks out there.

Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO

That's a relevant question. We've received a lot of inquiries, and as newcomers in this field, we have a distinct viewpoint, especially considering our experiences with mortgage insurance during the crisis. The mortgage insurers don't pay claims without the product, and Essent's entry into the market attracted private capital willing to take on that risk. It's important to note that the industry has paid out over $50 billion in claims. This situation provided us a chance to inform regulators and others about the value of mortgage insurance and its significance to the national housing finance system. Similarly, title insurance is an extremely valuable product that is often misunderstood. I believe we will focus on collaborating with industry partners to enhance the education of key stakeholders about the importance of title insurance, its usage, and its role in protecting borrowers as well as assisting lenders to strengthen the housing finance system. However, there is a concern regarding pricing for borrowers. In some states, borrowers can access a favorable price on refinancing, while in others, they cannot due to state regulations and challenges. For example, we may charge 40 basis points in 38 states, but in 12 states, we must charge 100 basis points, which negatively impacts the borrower. I believe that putting the borrower first is essential, and we are committed to doing that both in mortgage insurance and title services. This focus is where the current issues stem from. Until the industry addresses this challenge more effectively, there will always be temporary solutions in place. For instance, you see alternatives like AOL and title waivers because lenders are expressing their frustrations and searching for ways to navigate around the problems. I think the title insurance industry needs to acknowledge these realities long-term. Once they do, I believe everything will work out fine. Title insurance is a valuable product, and the industry has a promising future ahead.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Melissa Wedel from JPMorgan.

Melissa Wedel, Analyst

I'm stepping in for Rick this morning. I wanted to know your thoughts on the current vintage. You mentioned the health and credit metrics of the portfolio, and there's significant embedded home price appreciation that supports credit. In the current environment, we're experiencing reduced affordability, and it appears that there are fewer positive factors related to employment. We believe that employment is unlikely to improve from here. Considering the new business landscape, how much greater risk do you believe is present in this current vintage compared to the rest of the portfolio?

Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO

That's a good question. I would say, just big picture, we're pretty comfortable with the new writings. I know, clearly, with rates kind of close to 7% and home prices have been quite elevated. They haven't really grown that much. They've grown a little, but they've been relatively flattish. I would say, if we're going to pick on vintages, right, I mean, in general, we're talking about, again, like I said, 14,000 defaults. I would say the 2022 vintage is the one we probably look at the most just because that was done almost at the peak of HPA and our pricing was the lowest, right? That's when we had talked about, we had really low share at the end of '21, early '22 pricing and really bottomed out and increased materially from that point on. So just from like a unit economics basis, that's probably the one that we'll look at the most. It's actually performing pretty well. However, the incurred loss ratio is probably a little bit higher. With the new book, we're fairly comfortable with the unit economics. It might be slightly riskier than others, but I believe we're being compensated for that in terms of pricing.

Melissa Wedel, Analyst

A follow-up question is somewhat related. I would assume that many of the borrowers you are insuring likely have student loans. Do you have any insight into that? Are you noticing any impact on credit from borrowers who are either benefiting from forgiveness or postponing payments? Is there a risk that this could become a challenge if borrowers start to repay?

Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO

We have not experienced any challenges related to this. As we mentioned in the previous call, through EssentEDGE, we can differentiate between borrowers with student loans and those with similar credit scores, one group having student loans and the other having personal loans in a traditional consumer finance context. Interestingly, the borrowers with student loans have performed better, although the reasons for this are uncertain. This could be valuable information for investors from a student loan perspective. However, regarding the additional burden of repaying student loans, we have not observed any negative impact.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from Mihir Bhatia from Bank of America.

Mihir Bhatia, Analyst

I wanted to follow up a bit on a couple of the answers you gave, Mark, regarding Essent's strong performance in various macro market conditions over the past few years. You have also indicated previously that managing credit is your top long-term concern, correct? I'm trying to understand what potential external risks might affect Essent, assuming everything is on track internally. One common question we receive is about the current favorable operating environment and how things could potentially weaken from an external standpoint. In your earlier response, you mentioned that the job environment is deteriorating. Should we be focusing on the weakening job market as a significant risk for Essent?

Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO

Yes, it's a good question. We've been asked this for ten years: what can go wrong? I think we're clearly sensitive to unemployment. We never claimed during our IPO roadshow that the company would be recession-proof. Our approach is to prepare for a range of economic scenarios from both a business and balance sheet standpoint. As I mentioned earlier, the most variable aspect is the provision because it's directly tied to unemployment. If unemployment rises, our provision will also increase, and we experienced this in 2020 with a sudden spike in defaults in the second and third quarters. Despite that, we still made a profit in 2020. Ultimately, our structure is designed to deliver consistent earnings throughout the economic cycle. That doesn't mean they're always going to go up. There will be certain years with less performance due to the provision. The common misconception about mortgage insurers is that they will fail during economic downturns, which is simply not true. Our current ratings reflect this, as we maintain A-ratings across the board. The rating agencies conduct extensive stress tests, whether related to the global financial crisis or other scenarios, and we consistently emerge without depleting capital. In a financial services company, capital depletion can significantly erode valuation, as was evident in 2020. So when the stock dropped significantly during March and April, our reinsurance effectively provided a safety net. After some savvy investors took notice, it was remarkable that we traded at around 60 percent of our book value for a week or two in 2020. During conversations with investors, it became clear that the focus shifted from growth to concerns about potential losses. As we explained our reinsurance strategy and how well it hedged against risks, the stock price began to recover toward book value. Given the uncertainty in the market, we seized the chance to raise additional capital because we are committed to the long-term future of our insurance company. We believed we could navigate the financial crisis due to our structure. At that time, we were uncertain about facing a more severe crisis, as no one had a clear understanding back in April or May 2020. We took the opportunity to enhance our balance sheet. Having reinsurance made a significant difference, as predicting the lows would have been challenging without it. We could communicate to investors where the losses might occur. Questions about our potential for improvement are expected, and the outlook is quite positive. We are very satisfied with how the business is balanced. When rates decline, our investment yield will likely decrease slightly, and persistency will also probably drop. However, the book will continue to grow, leading to increased new investment opportunities. The title side may be more sensitive to lower rates when rates rise. With higher persistency comes a better investment yield, so I believe we are well balanced. It's important to consider that some mortgage services are in a similar situation, as evidenced by their strong servicing portfolios. There will always be concerns to address, but I think focusing on the balance of our portfolio is key. A slowdown will not harm the company in the long term, in my opinion.

Mihir Bhatia, Analyst

Got it. No, that's helpful. Interest rate buydowns and other programs that are being put in place to help with affordability. How are you thinking about those? Is that a factor in your pricing or not, I guess, either in your pricing or in your credit scoring?

Christopher Curran, President of Essent Guaranty

Mihir, it's Chris. As far as the buydown activity, we're pretty consistent in the first quarter with the first quarter of last year relative to the amount of buydowns and we'll call it the temporary buydowns that we are seeing. I think from a performance standpoint, even from temporary buydowns that have reset, we continue to actually be pleased with the overall performance of the temporary buydowns as compared to our entire portfolio. From a pricing standpoint for us, I mean, don't forget these loans are underwritten to the gross rates, I'll call it to the gross coupon. So from an underwriting perspective, we're comfortable with the production. And then certainly from a pricing perspective, it really goes back to EssentEDGE and how we leverage the data, the credit data for the borrower themselves versus the rate on the note.

Mihir Bhatia, Analyst

Okay, understood. My final question is about the mortgage market size for the year, specifically the MI market size, and what feedback are you receiving from originators as we move into the upcoming housing season, which typically shows improvement?

Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO

Yes. Historically, the origination pattern tends to follow a bell curve, with lower levels in the fourth quarter and a peak in the second and third quarters. This year, I don't anticipate a significant increase, considering the current interest rates and limited supply. Overall, the origination market estimates from Fannie Mae and the MBA might be a bit too optimistic. Part of that optimism stems from changes made in the fourth quarter, which have now shifted back to a prolonged high-interest rate environment. For the net issued loans market, I expect it to be around 250 to 275, which is acceptable. This suggests that the persistency will likely remain higher, as mentioned in the script. Depending on how rates behave later this year—and influenced by the upcoming elections—I believe a return to normalcy is on the horizon. The years 2020 and 2021 were outliers, and their effects are still evident in the origination market for 2022, 2023, and now 2024.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Bose George from KBW.

Bose George, Analyst

I just have a couple of follow-up questions. In terms of your cure rates, you guys in Exhibit K, you give the cumulative cure rate, the March 2023, I guess, now is 91% of that is cured. Like if you roll back further, so say, for example, March 2022, what does that number look like? Where does that get to for those earlier loans, vintages?

David Weinstock, Chief Financial Officer

Thanks for the question, Bose. I don't have those numbers readily available, but Phil can follow up with you later. As we continue to grow, we are seeing increased cure activity from all the vintages of defaults, so they will be higher. They will be in the mid- to upper 90s, but I don't have the exact figures at the moment.

Bose George, Analyst

Okay. But I guess, safe to say that they're coming in much better than your initial assumptions when you set your default to claim rates?

David Weinstock, Chief Financial Officer

Yes. We make our best estimates, and based on the favorable development from the prior year, I think that's a fair statement.

Operator, Operator

That concludes our question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO

Thanks, everyone, for joining. Nice questions from the analysts. I thought you guys did a great job and have a great weekend.

Operator, Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect.