Juan C. Andrade
President and Chief Executive Officer at Everest Re Group
Thank you, Matt. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us.
Everest started off strong in 2023 with significant growth, increased underwriting profits and operating ROE over 17% and total shareholder return in excess of 14%. We continued to diversify and expand our plan with both of our underwriting businesses delivering profitable, broad-based growth. In reinsurance, our leadership position was abundantly clear in the ongoing hard markets flight to quality. Our team's consistent execution resulted in record gross written premiums and expanded margins. We continue to invest in scaling our primary business, while remaining disciplined. We capitalized on the diversification of our portfolio and strong pricing environment. This led to stronger underwriting profits over last year. Everest is uniquely positioned to succeed in this market. We are bringing the full power of the Everest Global franchise together with underwriting discipline and the best talent in the business to drive sustainable returns.
With that, I'll turn to our first quarter financial highlights beginning at the group level. Group underwriting profit, net investment income, operating income and net income, all increased meaningfully in the quarter. Growth was excellent and we continue to see great opportunities for continued expansion. We grew gross written premiums by almost 20% in constant dollars year-over-year, led by the reinsurance division, which achieved record quarterly premiums. Continued rate increases, exposure growth and strong underwriting discipline, create margin expansion and keep us ahead of loss trend.
We delivered $443 million in net operating income, up over 9% from prior year. The group combined ratio was 91.2%, a 40 basis point improvement from last year. It includes 3.7 points of catastrophe losses from the Turkey earthquake and the New Zealand floods and typhoon. We have no meaningful loss activity from the spring storms in the US, as our derisking efforts continue to manifest themselves in both our reinsurance and insurance results. We improved our attritional loss ratio 30 basis points year-over-year, reflecting pricing momentum and improving terms. Underwriting profits were $273 million, which are among the company's highest orderly results over the past five years.
Turning to investments, our high-quality portfolio produced net investment income of $260 million, a 7% improvement from prior year, driven by higher new money yields.
Now, turning to our reinsurance business. Reinsurance delivered an outstanding first quarter performance with significant top and bottom line growth. We capitalized on our well positioned and scalable reinsurance franchise, our leadership position, the hard property cat market, and our deep client and broker relationships, resulting in excellent outcomes for the portfolio at the January 1 and April 1 renewals. The precise and disciplined execution by our reinsurance team positioned Everest to succeed in this dynamic market. We targeted attractive opportunities to grow with trusted partners and materially improved risk adjusted returns.
Our practice of setting clear and consistent expectations early with clients and brokers led to significant improvement in pricing and terms and conditions across our portfolio, while building long term relationship equity. That excess of loss pricing is excellent with risk adjusted rate changes at January 1, plus 50% in North America and over 40% international. Casualty lines' average rate increases continue to exceed trend. Importantly, our team was distinguished as the preferred reinsurance market by being proactive and constructive with our customers. The value we created with our partners gives us a competitive advantage, helps us to deepen our relationships and creates new opportunities. Our momentum continued at the April renewal, where pricing remained strong, up 44% in North America and 26% in international. This builds on prior rate increases in 2022 with expected returns consistent with the levels we saw at January 1.
We grew strategically, most notably in specialty lines such as marine and aviation with strong risk adjusted returns. We expect to benefit from improvements in ceding commissions for the remainder of the year. We expect the strong market conditions to continue through 2023 and into 2024, and we remain on offense in this robust market. Reinsurance topline results were excellent, up 23% on a constant dollar basis. The $2.6 billion in gross written premiums. As I mentioned earlier, this is a quarterly record. Growth was broad-based by line and geography, up double digits across every business unit. Property cat premiums were up 28% from last year, along with casualty and property pro rata premiums at 22% and 19%, respectively.
We delivered a 17% increase in underwriting profit to $207 million on a 90.8% combined ratio, a 60 basis point improvement from 2022. This included pre-tax catastrophe losses of $108 million, net of estimated recoveries and restatement premiums for the Turkey earthquakes and New Zealand floods and typhoon. Our deliberate efforts to optimize our portfolio and reduce cat volatility continue to improve our portfolio economics. Both the attritional loss ratio at 58% and the attritional combined ratio at 85.9% improved, down 90 basis points and 30 basis points, respectively. Remember, many of the rate and margin improvements made at January 1 and April 1 will take several quarters to earn into our financial results. This should be a meaningful benefit for earned premium throughout the year. As we head into the upcoming renewals, our value proposition and relationships in the market have never been stronger. We will continue to bolster our global leadership position and maximize our portfolio's performance.
Now, turning to insurance, where we delivered another solid performance in the first quarter. We achieved a 92.4% combined ratio, in line with our previous assumption resulting in an underwriting profit of $66 million, up 12% year-over-year. We continue to grow and develop a world class talent, capabilities and value proposition, we will enhance our portfolio and increase average share of the global insurance market. We grew the insurance segment by nearly 12% in constant dollars and generated over $8 billion in premiums for the eight consecutive quarter. Growth was broad geographically, driven by a diversified mix across property and specialty lines, particularly strong in marine, energy and construction. We remain cautious in certain lines, including Monoline's workers' compensation and public company D&O.
We also benefited from pricing improvements in the first quarter. We achieved an 8% rate increase, excluding workers' compensation, across the portfolio, led by property and excess liability with continued strong rate across other lines. This is the second sequential quarter with an increase in the overall level of rate changes achieved. We expect a hard market in reinsurance to put upward pressure on primary insurance pricing. This dynamic should extend the favorable pricing environment in insurance for the foreseeable future and will also benefit our pro rata business in the reinsurance segment.
Despite severe weather in the US in the quarter, our cat losses were immaterial at $2 million. The overall cat result reflects our disciplined portfolio management actions to reduce volatility over the last several years across the company. The attritional loss ratio was 64.2%, up modestly year-over-year, primarily due to a current accident year adjustment to a single medical stop loss program which we non-renewed. Mark will provide more detail on this in a few minutes. Throughout the first quarter, we continue to prudently manage the business, balancing investments in our people and infrastructure as we build the company for the future. We are streamlining and scaling our operations to serve the market with greater efficiency, connectivity and agility as we grow. We are well positioned to seize attractive opportunities in this environment. We are expanding our breadth of innovative products and advancing our leadership across the global P&C market anchored by our underwriting discipline. Our sights are set firmly on shareholders, clients and colleagues as we take full advantage of the robust opportunities in this market.
With that, I'll turn it over to Mark to review the financials in more detail.
