Six companies write essentially all the private mortgage insurance in the United States: MGIC, Radian, Enact, Essent, National MI, and Arch MI. One of them is collecting your premium every month. Most homeowners have no idea which — and no idea that one line in that policy can be worth thousands of dollars at the moment they cancel.
So: can you find out who holds your policy, and can you read its terms? Who — yes, easily. The terms — partly, and the parts you can get are the parts that matter.
First, why you don't already have a copy
The policy isn't yours. With borrower-paid PMI, the mortgage insurance company is the insurer, your lender is the insured, and you are neither — you're the risk being insured against, and the person paying for it. There's no borrower-side policy document because there's no borrower-side policy.
That's the reason nothing shows up in your mail. It is not a reason you can't find out — it just means you have to ask, rather than look.
Finding out who: four places to look
- Your closing package. Most closing packages include the MI Commitment or Certificate with the insurer's name and certificate number printed on it. This is the single best source, and it's usually sitting in a drawer or in your lender's document portal.
- Your annual escrow analysis. If your PMI runs through escrow, the disbursement line often names the payee outright — "MORTGAGE INS — MGIC." Not every servicer bills MI through escrow, but it costs you nothing to check.
- Ask your servicer. Call the number on your statement and ask for the mortgage insurance company and the certificate number. Front-line reps can normally read both off the file. This is the fastest path by a wide margin.
- Send a written Request for Information. If the phone call goes nowhere, this is the formal lever — and it's covered in detail below.
What terms you can actually get
Split the question in two, because the two halves behave completely differently.
The master policy — the contract between the insurer and lenders — is effectively public. All six companies publish theirs, and they show up as exhibits in SEC filings. Since the 2014 rewrite that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac required, they're also heavily standardized across the six. You can read one. It's written for lenders, it's long, and it says nothing specific about your loan.
Your certificate — the loan-level terms — is where the useful information lives. You have no legal entitlement to it, but servicers routinely provide the key figures when asked plainly. Ask for these four by name, because a vague request gets a vague answer:
1. The mortgage insurer's name and certificate number. 2. The coverage percentage. 3. The premium plan — monthly, single (paid in full at closing), or split. 4. Whether that premium is refundable or non-refundable, and the refund schedule that applies.
What you can't get: the rate card your lender negotiated, the insurer's underwriting decisions, or anything about the pool your loan was placed in. None of that affects your cancellation.
The written Request for Information
This is a real federal mechanism, not a stern letter. Under RESPA's servicing rules (12 C.F.R. § 1024.36) you can send your servicer a written request for information about your loan, and the servicer is obligated to respond. It must acknowledge within 5 business days, and answer within 30 business days for most requests — or within 10 business days if what you asked for is the identity of the owner or assignee of your loan.
Send it to the servicer's designated address for information requests (it's in your statement's fine print or on their website — the payment address usually isn't it). Ask for the four certificate items above, plus:
- The original value used for PMI — purchase price or original appraised value — and which one they apply.
- The date your balance reaches 80% of original value (your request right), the date it reaches 78% (automatic termination), and the amortization midpoint date.
- The owner or assignee of the loan — Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, private investor, or their own portfolio — and the investor guidelines that apply.
- Their complete written procedure for cancelling PMI based on current value, including what valuation they require, who orders it, and what it costs.
- Confirmation of whether the PMI is borrower-paid or lender-paid.
The response arrives in writing. That's the point — it becomes the record you hold them to later.
The term that can be worth thousands
Here is why the premium-plan question isn't trivia. If you paid a single premium at closing — one lump sum instead of a monthly charge, often 1.5% to 2.75% of the loan — then cancelling PMI can trigger a refund of the unearned portion. On a $270,000 loan, a single premium is commonly in the $4,000 to $7,000 range, and the refundable share early on is a large fraction of it.
Enact publishes its refundable single-premium schedule, and it gives you the shape of the thing: 90% refunded if cancelled in month one, 73% at month 12, 55% at month 24, 37% at month 36, 18% at month 48 — and zero from month 60 onward. On a $5,400 single premium, cancelling at month 24 is roughly $2,900 back. Waiting until month 60 is nothing.
"Non-refundable" does not mean no refund. Non-refundable single premiums are the cheaper option at closing and pay nothing back on an ordinary cancellation — but when PMI is cancelled under the Homeowners Protection Act, federal law requires a refund of unearned premium anyway, on a separate HPA refund schedule. Insurers publish those schedules too, and they typically run well past the 60-month cliff on the ordinary refundable schedule. If you were told "yours is non-refundable, there's nothing to discuss," that answer is incomplete.
Why the cancellation path matters, not just the outcome
This is the subtle part, and it caught real homeowners out. The HPA refund right at 12 U.S.C. § 4902(f) attaches to cancellation under the statute — the 80% request, the 78% automatic termination, or the midpoint backstop. In 2025 the Fourth Circuit held in Kovachevich v. National Mortgage Insurance Corp. that a voluntary cancellation, agreed outside those statutory triggers, does not trigger the federal refund right at all.
That matters because the most common way people cancel early — asking the servicer to drop PMI based on the home's current appreciated value — is a discretionary path, not an HPA path. It's a great outcome. It just may not carry the federal refund with it. If you're sitting on a single premium and you're close to an HPA date anyway, which lever you pull is a real financial decision, not a formality. (State-law claims can still exist; that's a question for a lawyer, not a checklist.)
One more timing trap: insurers generally won't refund for any period more than 45 days before they receive the cancellation notice from the servicer. A servicer that cancels your PMI promptly but takes three months to notify the insurer can quietly cost you part of your refund. Ask for the date the notice went to the insurer, and keep it.
The honest bottom line
For most homeowners, knowing whether it's MGIC or Essent changes nothing about getting PMI removed. Cancellation is governed by federal law and your investor's guidelines, and it's executed by your servicer. The insurance company doesn't approve or deny your request — it just stops billing when the servicer cancels the certificate.
There are exactly two situations where the policy details do matter:
- You paid a single premium. Then there's potentially thousands of dollars in unearned premium on the table, and both the timing and the legal path of your cancellation affect whether you see it.
- Your PMI is lender-paid (LPMI). Then it isn't cancellable at all — no request, no appraisal, no amount of equity changes it. Only refinancing removes it. Finding this out early saves months of wasted effort.
Both of those are things you'd want to know before you start, and both come from the same short list of questions.
That's the part we handle. We find out whether you're paying PMI, what kind, what it's costing you, and whether you already qualify to cancel — free, with no credit pull and no change to your loan. You don't have to call anyone, decode your statement, or read a word of any policy.
Find out what's actually on your loan — and what it's worth to cancel it.
Check my eligibility free →Refund percentages cited are from Enact's published Refundable Single Premium schedule (Schedule H, applications received on or after February 15, 2022) and are illustrative — your insurer, your certificate date, your loan term, your rate, and your LTV all change the schedule that applies to you. Response deadlines are from Regulation X, 12 C.F.R. § 1024.36. This is general information, not legal or financial advice.