Lee M. Shavel
Chief Financial Officer and Group President at Verisk Analytics
Thanks, Scott. First, I would like to bring to everyone's attention that we've posted a quarterly earnings presentation that's available on our website. Moving to the financial results for the quarter. On a consolidated and GAAP basis, revenue grew 8% to $759 million. Net income attributable to Verisk increased 8.6% to $202 million while diluted GAAP earnings per share attributable to Verisk increased 10.7% to $1.24.
Moving to our organic constant currency results. Adjusted for nonoperating items, as defined in the non-GAAP financial measures section of our press release, we are very pleased with our operating results, led by continued and consistent growth in our subscription revenues. In the third quarter, organic constant currency revenue grew 5.1%, driven by continued strength in our insurance segment and modest growth in energy and specialized markets. This was offset in part by weakness in the Financial Services segment as we experienced the final quarter of impact from the contract restructurings as well as continued COVID-related impacts.
Our non-COVID-sensitive revenues, as we defined at the beginning of the pandemic, increased 5.6% in the third quarter, which was consistent with results reported in the second quarter 2021 despite tougher year-over-year comparisons, as our non-COVID-sensitive revenues included 7.8% in the third quarter of 2020. The stable growth in our non-COVID-sensitive revenues, representing approximately 85% of our total revenues reflects the durability and resilience of our primarily subscription model and the mission-critical nature of our solutions.
Our COVID-sensitive revenues which represent 15% of our consolidated revenues increased 1.6% as compared to declines of 10% in the third quarter last year. Growth was primarily the result of improvements in consulting in our Energy segment and a return to pre-pandemic growth rates in many of our products and services within insurance, particularly within the U.S. We did experience continued COVID-related weakness in our Financial Services segment as COVID forbearance programs are negatively impacting bankruptcy volumes.
To be specific, our COVID-sensitive revenues increased 8% and 12% within the Insurance and Energy segments, respectively, but registered declines of 28% within financial services. It's also important to note that, that 28% decline also included the impact of the contract restructuring that we have described previously and which ended in the third quarter. Given that Financial Services is the segment with the largest percentage of COVID-sensitive transactional revenues, this had a disproportionate impact on the overall result.
Organic constant currency adjusted EBITDA growth was 2.1% in the third quarter. Organic constant currency adjusted EBITDA growth was impacted by tough comparisons as we took aggressive cost actions in the third quarter of 2020 in response to the pandemic across all our segments. Total adjusted EBITDA margin, which includes both organic and inorganic revenue and adjusted EBITDA, was 49.9% in the quarter, down 221 basis points on a year-over-year basis, but still well above our pre-pandemic margin level of 47.4% recorded in the third quarter of 2019. Much of the decline is associated with the normalization of our costs as we anniversary the COVID benefits from last year, including reduced headcount and lower incentive compensation.
This level of margin also includes approximately 100 basis points of headwind from our ongoing technological transformation, including our cloud transition costs, which we absorbed into our cost structure. On that note, let's turn to our segment results on an organic constant currency basis. In the third quarter, Insurance segment revenues increased 7.4%, demonstrating strong resilience in recovery. We saw healthy growth in our industry standard insurance programs, repair cost estimating solutions, claims analytics solutions, catastrophe modeling, life insurance solutions and international insurance software solutions.
We also experienced solid growth in transactional revenues, including 8% growth in our COVID impacted revenues as we compared against flattish results last year. We also experienced a modest benefit to growth from storm-related revenue resulting from Hurricane Ida. Adjusted EBITDA grew 4.8% in the third quarter while margins declined 200 basis points to 55.9%, reflecting a return to a normalized rate of headcount growth compared to the prior year and higher year-over-year short-term incentive compensation expense.
Nevertheless, this quarter's margin is still 300 basis points above our pre-pandemic levels recorded in 2019 and continues to reflect accelerated investment in our breakout areas like life insurance and telematics as well as our technology modernization, including our cloud transition. Energy and Specialized Markets revenue increased 2.5% in the third quarter due to recovery in our consulting and project-based revenues across energy and power. Strong growth in environmental health and safety solutions and in our breakout solutions, including energy transition and chemicals.
We continue to benefit from strong adoption of our Lens platform as customers are seeing the value of our integrated cloud-based data analytical environment, and we are very pleased with their contributions to our annualized contract value progression over the course of the last two quarters. Adjusted EBITDA declined 2.6% in the third quarter while margins contracted 300 basis points, reflecting tough comparisons from last year when we enacted headcount reductions, furloughs and compensation adjustments in reaction to the challenging operating environment in 2020. This was still well above the 33.3% margin we reported in the third quarter of 2019 before the pandemic.
We remind you that some of the costs taken in the third quarter were reversed in the fourth quarter of 2020, making for easier comparisons in fourth quarter '21. Within our Energy segment, we are working to combine the proprietary data assets, skill sets, infrastructure, expertise and deep capabilities of our Wood Mackenzie Genscape and PowerAdvocate businesses. Specifically, we are taking the best of breed from each business and combining it with a common data architecture as the backbone. This modern and flexible data architecture will enable more efficient and effective sharing of data, thus accelerating the innovation process for new solutions in key areas like supply chain, cost management, power and renewables, chemicals, hydrogen, carbon and metals and mining.
This will also empower stronger cross-sell of solutions across the various customer bases, particularly in the global power and renewable sector as we help our global customers navigate this broader energy transition. Financial services revenue declined 13.5% in the quarter, reflecting the final quarter of impact from the contract transitions that we undertook in 2020 as well as a lower level of bankruptcy revenue because of government support and forbearance program. Spend in form analytics demonstrated strong growth as spending and advertising levels continue to improve as the economy emerges from COVID.
Adjusted EBITDA declined 42% in the quarter, reflecting the negative impact of lower sales and a larger impact of corporate expense allocations on the segment's smaller base. Total adjusted EBITDA margins were 19%, still down from the prior year, but an improvement from the first half of 2021 as a result of expense discipline and lower bad debt expense. Our reported effective tax rate was 20.8% compared to 22.6% in the prior year quarter, in line with our expectations.
Looking ahead, we expect our tax rate to approximate 18% to 20% for the fourth quarter of 2021. The adjusted net income increased 7.4% to $234 million and diluted adjusted EPS increased 9% to $1.44 for the third quarter of 2021. These increases reflect organic growth in the business, contributions from acquisitions, a lower tax rate and a lower average share count. Net cash provided by operating activities was $285 million for the quarter, up 38% from the prior year period. The prior year period's cash flow was negatively impacted by the timing of certain federal income tax payments and certain employer payroll taxes because of the CARES Act.
Year-to-date, net cash provided by operating activities was $967 million, reflecting growth of 18% versus the prior year period. Capital expenditures were $61.4 million for the quarter, down 5% versus last year, reflecting cost savings on third-party hardware and software as we move to the cloud. We continue to believe that Capex for 2021 should be in the range of $250 million to $280 million, reflecting our continued investment in our innovation agenda. Our technological transformation as well as the carryover of certain expenditures that were delayed in 2020 as a result of the pandemic.
Related to Capex, we expect fixed asset depreciation and amortization should be within the range of $200 million to $215 million and intangible amortization to be approximately $175 million. Both depreciation and amortization elements are subject to FX variability, the timing of purchases and the completion of projects and future M&A activity. During the third quarter, we returned $197 million in capital to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends as our strong cash flow allows us to invest behind our highest growth and highest return capital initiatives, but also return capital to shareholders consistently.
In summary, we are not sitting still at Verisk as demonstrated by our third quarter performance and Scott's earlier comments regarding our portfolio review. Looking ahead, we have confidence in our ability to manage the cost structure to protect profitability. We continue to believe that we have tough cost comparisons relative to the COVID impact in quarters last year, we should retain much of the margin expansion we experienced in 2020, delivering margins ahead of our 2019 pre-pandemic level of 47%.
Further, we believe that the COVID impacts continue to abate and global economies further open up, we can return to our long-term growth model of 7% organic constant currency revenue growth with core operating leverage allowing EBITDA to grow faster than revenue. We hope this provides some useful context for you, and we look forward to addressing your questions. We continue to appreciate all the support and interest in Verisk. Given the large number of analysts we have covering us. [Operator Instructions]
With that, I'll ask the operator to open the line for questions.