Thomas P. Kalmbach
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Globe Life
Thanks, Frank. So in the fourth quarter, the company purchased 490,000 shares of Global Life Inc. common stock for a total cost of $56 million at an average share price of $115.01 and ended the fourth quarter with liquid assets of approximately $91 million. For the full year, we spent approximately $335 million to purchase 3.3 million shares at an average price of $100.90. The total amount spent on repurchases included $55 million of parent company liquidity. In addition to the liquid assets of the parent, the parent company will generate additional excess cash flows during 2023.
The company's excess cash flow as we define it results 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 $410 million to $450 million and is available to return to its shareholders in the form of dividends and through share repurchases. This amount is higher than 2022 primarily due to lower COVID life losses incurred in '22, which will result in higher statutory income in '22 as compared to 2021, thus providing higher dividends to the parent in 2023 that were received in 2022.
As previously noted, we had approximately $91 million of liquid assets -- $91 million in liquid assets as compared to the $50 million or $60 million of liquid assets we have historically targeted. With the $91 million of liquid assets, plus $410 million to $450 million of excess cash flows expected to be generated in 2023, we anticipate having $500 million to $540 million of assets available to the parent in 2023, of which we anticipate distributing approximately $80 million to $85 million to our shareholders in the form of dividend payments.
As noted 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 parent's excess cash flow 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 issue new insurance policies, expand and modernization of 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 between $360 million and $400 million of share repurchases will occur during the year.
Now with regard to capital levels at our insurance subsidiaries. Our goal is to maintain our capital levels necessary to support current ratings. Global Life targets a consolidated company action level RBC ratio in the range of 300% to 320%. For 2022, since our statutory financial statements are not yet finalized, our consolidated RBC ratio is not yet known. However, we anticipate the final 2022 RBC ratio will be near the midpoint of this range without any additional capital contributions. As noted on the previous call, the new NAIC factors became effective in 2022 related to mortality risk, also known as C2. Given the consistent generation of strong statutory gains from insurance operations and given our product portfolio, these new factors will simply result in an even stronger capital adequacy at our target RBC ratios.
Now I'd like to provide you a few comments related to the impact of excess policy obligations on fourth quarter results. Overall, fourth quarter excess policy obligations were in line with our expectations. In the fourth quarter, the company incurred approximately $5 million of COVID life claims related to approximately 31,000 U.S. COVID deaths occurring in the quarter as reported by the CDC and was in line with expectations. We also incurred excess deaths as compared to those expected based on pre-pandemic levels from non-COVID causes, including deaths due to lung disorders, heart and circulatory issues and neurological disorders. We believe the higher level of mortality we have seen is due in large part to the effects of the pandemic. So, as the number of COVID deaths has moderated, so has the number of deaths from other causes. In the fourth quarter, the impact of excess non-COVID policy -- life policy obligations were generally in line with our expectations at about $6 million.
For the full year, the company incurred approximately $49 million of COVID life policy obligations related to approximately 243,000 U.S. COVID deaths, an average of $2 million per 10,000 U.S. deaths. In addition, we estimate non-COVID claims resulted in approximately $69 million of higher policy obligations for the full year. The $118 million combined impact of COVID and higher non-COVID policy obligations was around 4% of total life premium in 2022, down from approximately 6% in 2021. Based on the data we currently have available, we estimate incurring approximately $45 million of total excess life policy obligations from both COVID and non-COVID claims in 2023. We estimate that the total reported U.S. deaths from COVID will be approximately 105,000 at the midpoint of our guidance.
Finally, with respect to earnings guidance for 2023, as noted on prior calls, the new accounting standard related to long duration contracts is effective January 1, 2023. From this point forward, we report 2023 results and guidance under the new accounting requirements. I will do my best to bridge the gap as there are many changes with these new requirements. So we are projecting net operating income per share will be in the range of $10.20 to $10.50 per diluted common share for the year ending December 31, 2023. The $10.35 midpoint of our guidance is lower than what we had indicated last quarter when including the impact of LDTI adoption. The reduction is primarily due to a reduction in the expected impact from the adoption of LDTI as we get more information and have refined our assumptions and estimates impacting both 2022 and 2023.
In addition to the lower LDPI impact, we anticipate slightly lower premiums, higher customer lead and agency expenses, as well as higher financing costs, which are reflective of higher short-term yields than previously anticipated. We estimate the after tax impact of implementing the new accounting standard results in an increase in 2023 net operating income in the range of $105 million to $115 million. We are still in the process of determining the full 2022 results under the new standard. Once finalized, it could affect the 2023 estimated results.
Going forward, fluctuations in experience and changes in assumptions will result in changes in both future policy obligations and the amortization of DAC as a percent of premium. The largest driver of the increase is lower amortization of deferred acquisition costs or DAC than under the prior accounting standard due to the changes in the treatment of renewal commissions, the elimination of interest on DAC balances, the updating of certain assumptions and the methods of amortizing DAC. Due to the treatment of deferred renewal commissions on amortization in our captive agency channels, we do expect that acquisition costs as a percent of premium will increase slightly over the next few years.
In addition to the changes affecting the amortization of DAC, the new accounting standard changes how policy obligations are determined under the new standard, life policy up -- life policyholder benefits reported in 2021 and 2022 will be required to be restated to reflect the new requirements and will include the impact of unlocking and updating prior assumptions. For 2023, absent any assumption changes, we expect the following impacts. Life obligations as a percent of premium will be in the range of 40.5% to 42.5%. This is consistent with the average life policy obligation ratio over the last five years. Health obligations as a percent of health premium will be in the range of 50% to 52%. This is about 3% to 4.5% lower than the average health policy obligation percentage over the last five years.
For the life and health lines combined, commissions, amortization and non-deferred acquisition costs as a percent of premium will be in the range of 20% to 21.5%, approximately 8% to 9.5% lower than the recent five-year averages. The resulting life underwriting margin as a percent of premium are expected to be in the range of 37% to 38% and health underwriting margins as a percent of premium in the range of 28% to 29%. So offsetting the increases in underwriting income will be a reduction to excess investment income to the elimination of interest accruals on DAC balances that historically have reduced net required interest.
In 2022, interest on DAC balances was approximately $260 million. In 2023, this will be zero under the new standards as compared to between $275 million and $285 million of interest accruals on DAC under historical GAAP that we would have anticipated. In addition, required interest will change due to the changes in reserve balances at transition and restated balances in 2021 and 2022 under the new requirements. We anticipate that required interest in 2023 will be in the range of $910 million to $920 million.
With respect to changes in AOCI, we noted in the past few quarters that under the new accounting standard, there is a requirement to remeasure the company's future policy benefits each quarter utilizing a discount rate that reflects the upper medium grade fixed income instrument yield and affects the changes -- with the effects of the change to be recognized in AOCI, a component of shareholders' equity. The upper medium grade fixed income yields generally consist of single A rated fixed income instruments at a relative -- reflective of the currency and tenor of the insurance liability cash flows. As of year-end 2022, had the new accounting standard been in place, we anticipate the after tax impact on AOCI would have decreased reported equity in the range of $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion.
While the GAAP accounting changes will be significant, it's very important to keep in mind that the changes impact the timing of when future profits will be recognized and that none of the changes will impact our premium rates, the amount of premium we collect or the amount of claims we ultimately pay. Furthermore, it has no impact on the statutory earnings -- statutory capital we're required to maintain for regulatory purposes or the parent company's excess cash flows nor will it cause us to make any changes in the products we offer.
Those are my comments. I'll now turn it over to Matt.
