Thank you, Wyatt!  Glad you found the article interesting.

The direction of claims is a really interesting issue.  In one respect, the claims picture is plainly improving-- the title insurers are telling us that they have had much lower claims so far on policies that they have issued the past couple of years.  But First American just had to set aside a very steep 13.8% of revenues for claims in the first quarter.  The problem seems to primarily be claims which are continuing to run higher than expected on past years' policies-- First American, for instance, specifically mentioned that they had to set aside more money in the first quarter for claims on policies issued in 2007.

The title insurers can write solid gold policies from now until the cows come home, but they still may not get their claims payout ratios down if they keep getting hit with unexpected levels of claims on bubble era policies.

And of course First American still has the $500+ million Bank of America lien protection claims lawsuit hanging over their heads.  All First American will say on that is that they have now reserved some money for claims regarding that suit-- they do not disclose how much.  It's likely that the amount the have to end up paying on that will be much higher or lower than the amount that they have reserved anyway, so the resolution of that lawsuit, and any other similar ones yet to come, will also have a big bearing on what that claims ratio graph looks like in upcoming years.