Thomas P. Kalmbach
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Globe Life
Thanks, Frank.
First, let me spend a few minutes discussing our share repurchase program, available liquidity and capital position. The Parent began the year with liquid assets of $91 million and ended the third quarter with liquid assets of approximately $69 million. In the third quarter, the Company repurchased approximately 755,000 shares of Globe Life, Inc. common stock for a total cost of $84 million. The average share price for these repurchases was $111.52. To date, in the fourth quarter, we have purchased 165,000 shares for a total cost of $18 million at an average share price of $108.36, resulting in repurchases year-to-date of 2.9 million shares for a total cost of $321 million at an average share price of $111.63.
In addition to the liquid assets held by the Parent, the Parent Company generated excess cash flows during the third quarter, and will continue to do so for the remainder of 2023. The Parent Company's excess cash flow, as we define it, resulted primarily from the dividends received by the Parent from its subsidiaries less the interest paid on debt. We anticipate the Parent Company's excess cash flow for the full year will be approximately $425 million and available to return to its shareholders in the form of dividends and through share repurchases.
As previously noted, we had approximately $69 million of liquid assets at the end of the quarter, slightly above the $50 million to $60 million of liquid assets we have historically targeted. In addition to the $69 million of liquid assets, we expect to generate $35 million to $40 million of excess cash flows in the fourth quarter of 2023, providing us with approximately $90 million of assets available to the Parent for the remainder of 2023, after taking into consideration the approximately $18 million of share repurchases to date in the fourth quarter. We anticipate distributing approximately $21 million to our shareholders in the form of dividend payments for the remainder of 2023.
As I mentioned -- excuse me, as I mentioned on previous calls, we will use our cash as efficiently as possible. We still believe that share repurchases provide the best return or yield to our shareholders over other available alternatives. Thus, we anticipate share repurchases will continue to be the primary use of the Parent's excess cash flows after the payment of shareholder dividends.
It should be noted that the cash received by the Parent Company from our insurance operations is after our subsidiaries have made substantial investments during the year to generate new sales, expand and modernize our information technology and other operational capabilities as well as to acquire new long-duration assets to fund their future cash needs. The remaining amount is sufficient to support the targeted capital levels within our insurance operations and maintain the share repurchase program for 2023.
In our earnings guidance, we anticipate approximately $465 million will be returned to shareholders in 2023, including approximately $380 million through share repurchases.
Now with regards to capital levels at our insurance subsidiaries. Our goal is to maintain our capital levels necessary to support our current ratings. Globe Life targets a consolidated company action level RBC ratio in the range of 300% to 320%. As discussed on previous calls, our consolidated RBC ratio was 321% at the end of 2022. In light of credit losses incurred to date, we anticipate our overall year-end RBC ratio to be at the midpoint of our range, or approximately 310%. At this point, we do not anticipate any significant credit losses or downgrades for the remainder of the year. But to the extent, any do occur, we are well-positioned to address any capital needed by our insurance subsidiaries to maintain RBC levels at the midpoint of our range.
Now with regards to policy obligations for the current quarter. As we've discussed on prior calls, we've included the historical operating summary results under LDTI for each of the quarters in 2022 with -- within the supplemental financial information available on our website. In addition, we included an exhibit that details the remeasurement gain or loss by distribution channel. The total remeasurement gain of $19 million for the quarter reflects both current period fluctuations in experience from expected and the impact of assumption changes made in the quarter.
Also, as noted on prior calls, life and health assumption changes were made in the third quarter of 2022 with an expectation of higher mortality in the life segment and more favorable claim trends in the health segment. For the third quarter of '23, we again updated those, both our life and health assumptions, lapse, mortality and morbidity, and as we expected, the overall impact on 3Q -- on third quarter results was not significant, with a combined decrease in total life and health obligations of approximately $3 million. The life assumption changes increased life obligations by approximately $2 million in the quarter, while health assumption changes decreased health obligations by approximately $5 million.
In addition to the assumption changes, the remeasurement gain or loss also indicates experienced fluctuations. For the third quarter life policy obligations were favorable when compared to our assumptions of mortality and persistency. The remeasurement gain related to experienced fluctuations from the life segment resulted in $13 million of lower life policy obligations and $3 million of lower health policy obligations, primarily as a result of favorable claim experience versus expected.
Now with regards to guidance -- earnings guidance for 2023. We are projecting net operating income per diluted share will be in the range of $10.49 to $10.65 for the year ending December 31, 2023. The $10.50 midpoint of our guidance is $0.10 higher than what we had indicated last quarter, largely due to favorable policy obligations in the third quarter. Our guidance anticipated -- our guidance anticipates that continuation of recent favorable short-term trends, although at a lower level than the third quarter. For the full year 2023, we anticipate life underwriting margins to be approximately 38% of premium and health underwriting margins to be approximately 29% of premium. Total acquisition cost, including the amortization of deferred acquisition costs as well as non-deferred acquisition costs and commissions, are expected to be 21% of premium, which is consistent with the third quarter.
Now with regards to '24 guidance. For the full year 2024, we estimate net operating earnings per diluted share will be in the range of $11.00 to $11.60, representing 7% growth at the midpoint of the range. We anticipate life and health underwriting income to grow consistent with premium growth, with life and health underwriting margins as a percentage of premium to fall within the same range as '23 or about 37% to 39% for life and 28% to 30% for health. At the midpoint of our guidance, we anticipate life premiums growing at approximately 5% and health premiums growing at around 7%. In addition, higher interest rates are expected to favorably impact excess investment income as we anticipate it to increased 7% to 9% at the midpoint of our guidance.
Although 2023 results are not final for the year, at this time, we anticipate Parent excess cash flows, available to return to shareholders in 2024, will be a little over $400 million, slightly lower than '23 due in part to the impact of 2023 statutory income, realized losses and the cost of agency sales growth, offsetting the benefits from favorable mortality trends and higher investment yields.
Finally, let me comment on the merger announcement of Evry Health. Earlier in the month, we announced entering into a merger agreement with Evry Health, a small regional healthcare company, locally focused in the major urban areas of Texas. Evry is a start-up, with a technology focus to provide outstanding customer experience and result in positive health outcomes. We previously had made a small investment in Evry, and recently, had the opportunity to acquire the whole company. We believe full ownership will allow Evry to grow, but more importantly, allow us to directly assess how we can utilize Evry's technology to enhance Globe's customer experience and service offerings. We do not expect Evry to have a significant impact on 2023 or 2024 results.
Those are my comments. I'll now turn it back to Matt.
