Credit Counselor: Mortgage Insurers Help Troubled Borrowers with Debt Counseling.(PMI Mortgage Insurance Co.)(Brief Article)

As we all know, there is always a good long lag time between when a borrower starts to have economic problems and when they finally reach the point of foreclosure - usually about six months to a year.

As we move further and further away from the events of last September and move through our current recession, there is concern in the industry, especially among mortgage insurers, about seeing a dramatic increase in foreclosures soon.

And insurers have reason to worry. During the 1990s, the industry paid out more than $8 billion in claims, up about $2 billion from the prior decade, according to the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America, Washington.

The current concerns about increasing foreclosures also steam from the fact that the industry, over the decades, has been increasingly insuring high-risk loans.

According to MICA, in 1999 alone, nearly half of all privately-insured home loans were made with downpayments of less than 10%.

Fearing upcoming potentially severe losses, some in the mortgage insurance industry are initiating counseling campaigns geared toward homeowners to try to prevent as many upcoming delinquencies from turning into defaults and then foreclosures.

Among the insurers taking a lead in this approach is PMI Mortgage Insurance, San Francisco, which recently partnered with the city's chapter of Consumer Credit Counseling Services for a national education and media campaign to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.