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 year with liquid assets of approximately $48 million. In the fourth quarter, the company repurchased approximately 660,000 shares of Globe Life, Inc. common stock for a total cost of $77 million. The average share price for these repurchases was $117.02. For the full year, we purchased 3.4 million shares for a total cost of $380 million at an average share price of $112.84. Including shareholder dividend payments of $84 million, the company returned approximately $464 million to shareholders during 2023.
In addition to liquid assets held by the parent, the parent company will generate excess cash flows during 2024. The parent company's excess cash flows 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 $420 million to $460 million and is available to return to its shareholders in the form of dividends and through share repurchases. Excess cash flows in 2024 are estimated to be higher than those in 2023, primarily due to anticipated higher statutory earnings in 2023 as compared to 2022, thus providing higher dividends to the parent in 2024 than were received in 2023.
The reason for this anticipated increase is due primarily to favorable life claims, which are sufficient to offset approximately $50 million of realized losses in 2023. So using the $48 million of liquid assets plus the $420 million to $460 million of excess cash flows expected to be generated in 2024, we anticipate having approximately $470 million to $510 million of liquid assets available to the parent in 2024, of which we anticipate distributing approximately $85 million to $90 million to our shareholders in the form of dividend payments.
As 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 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, transform and modernize our information technology and other operational capabilities, as well as 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 in 2024. In our earnings guidance, we estimate approximately $330 million to $370 million of share repurchases will occur during the year. With regards to the 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. For 2023, since our statutory financial statements are not yet finalized, our consolidated RBC ratio is not yet known. However, we anticipate the final 2023 RBC ratio will be slightly above the middle of our targeted range without any additional capital contributions being made.
Now with regards to policy obligations for the current quarter. As we have discussed on previous calls, we have included the historical operating summary under results under LDTI for each of the quarters in 2023 and 2022 within the supplemental financial information available on our website. In addition, we include an exhibit that details the remeasurement gain or loss by distribution channel. As also noted on previous calls, life and health assumption changes were made in the third quarter of 2023. No assumption changes were made in the fourth quarter.
In addition to the impact of assumption changes, the remeasurement gain or loss also indicates experience fluctuations. For the fourth quarter, life policy obligations were favorable when compared to our assumptions of mortality and persistency. The remeasurement gain related to experience fluctuations resulted in $13 million of lower life policy obligations and $4 million of lower health policy obligations primarily a result of favorable claims experience versus expected. For the full year, encompassing both assumption changes and experience related fluctuations, the remeasurement gained for the life segment resulted in $29 million of lower life policy obligations and $12 million of lower health policy obligations.
This is the second quarter in a row with life remeasurement gains greater than $10 million. We are encouraged by this short term trend and to the extent it continues, we would expect continued favorable remeasurement gains in 2024. The recent experience as well as life mortality trends in the first half of 2024 will inform the third quarter 2024 update to our endemic mortality assumptions. Recall, our endemic mortality assumption currently assumes returning to mortality levels slightly above up pre pandemic levels over the next few years. Recent trends if they should continue may indicate a quicker recovery than our current assumption.
So finally, with respect to our earnings guidance for 2024. For the full year 2024, we estimate net operating earnings per diluted share will be in the range of $11.30 to $11.80, representing 8.5% growth at the midpoint of the range. The $11.55 midpoint is higher than our previous guidance and reflects recent favorable mortality trends continuing in '24.
Those are my comments. I will now turn the call back to Matt.
