Question-and-Answer Session
[Operator Instructions]. We will now take our first question from the line of Ed Spehar with Merrill Lynch.
Eric E. Parsons - Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Hello, Ed?
Edward Spehar - Merrill Lynch
Thank you. Hi, how are you?
Eric E. Parsons - Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Good, yourself?
Edward Spehar - Merrill Lynch
Good, thanks. I have two questions. The first is, I guess I was a little bit surprised by the reduction in the discount rate and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about what your new money rate looks like today, especially considering the opportunities you might see on the commercial mortgage side? And then related to that I was wondering if you could go through with us again, how we should think about an increase in mortgage originations and the related income that you might get in the Asset Management segment, and maybe what's your capacity is to originate loans because it seems like there is an opportunity to step in given what's happened in these securitization market?
Floyd Chadee - Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Ed, this is Floyd. I'll start with the question on the discount rate. The spreads have widened... the spreads have widened in the quarter, but at the same time we've seen treasuries go down. So our actual rate... new money rate for the quarter was in the order of 5.37%. Now the way we set the discount rate is, we try to maintain an average margin over the 12-weighted margin over the last 12 months. So consistent with that when we look at the new money rate in the first quarter here, given the widening spreads for the decrease in the base rates and the fact that our new money rate went down, we ended up with a 5.0%. So I think it's driven not by the... just by the widening spreads but the decrease in the base rates too. One of the things that we... when we look at single A corporate for example, I mean, the yield on those went anywhere from 544 to 519, but went as low as 502 during the quarter. So we did see a decrease in the new money rate. I mean this is something we look at every quarter and we'll see how it goes next quarter too. As far as mortgage origination goes, I'll turn that question to Kim to give you some color on that.
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