Alan Schnitzer
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Travelers Companies
Thank you, Abbe, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I was very pleased to report a terrific start to the year, including an excellent bottom-line result for the quarter, particularly in light of a high-level of severe weather activity across the United States and very strong production in all three of our business segments, which produced net written premium growth of 12% for the quarter.
Profitability and growth in our Business Insurance Segment were particularly strong. And as you'll hear from Michael, we're positioned for improved profitability in our Personal Lines Business. Core income for the quarter was $970 million or $4.11 per diluted share, generating core return-on-equity of 14.5%. Core income benefited from record net earned premiums of $8.9 billion, up 10% compared to the prior year period, an excellent underlying combined ratio of 90.6%. And a one-time tax benefit.
Catastrophe losses were elevated as the industry experienced the highest number of Q1 PCS catastrophe events since PCS started tracking in the 1950s.
Turning to investments, our high-quality portfolio generated net investment income of $557 million, after tax for the quarter. Reflecting reliable results from our fixed-income portfolio and positive returns from our non-fixed income portfolio. Our underwriting and investment results together with our strong balance sheet enabled us to return $680 million of excess capital to shareholders, including $462 million of share repurchases. At the same time, we grew adjusted book-value per share and made important investments in our business as we notched another quarter of successful execution on a number of important strategic initiatives.
In light of our strong financial position and confidence in the outlook for our business. I'm pleased to share that our Board of Directors declared an 8% increase in our quarterly cash dividend to $1 per share marking 19th consecutive years of dividend increases. The compound annual growth rate of 8% over that period. The Board also authorized an additional $5 billion of share repurchases.
Turning to the top-line and production. Thanks. Once again to excellent execution by our colleagues in the field, we grew net written premiums by 12% this quarter to a record $9.4 billion, with all three segments contributing. In business Insurance, we grew net written premiums by 15% to $5.2 billion. You may recall that we entered into a quota-share arrangement with Fidelis for 2023, this contributed about $160 million or around 3.5 percentage points net written premium growth in this segment.
Results from the quota-share are not reflected in our production statistics. Renewal premium change in Business Insurance remains historically high at 9.6%. Pure renewal rate change ticked up a little bit from the fourth quarter, driven by the property umbrella and auto lines. Even with continued strong pricing broadly retention in Business Insurance was very strong at 87%. New businesses $639 million, was a record and up 17% from the prior year period.
In Bond & Specialty Insurance net written premiums increased slightly from a very strong level in the prior year quarter, with excellent retention of 90% and new business growth of 25% in our Management Liability business and a record level of Q1 net written premiums in our surety business. Given the attractive returns and the high-quality of business in our commercial segments, we are very pleased with strong production results in these businesses.
In personal Insurance topline growth of 12% was driven by higher pricing. Renewal premium change increased to 20.2% in our Homeowners and other business and a 13.9% in our auto business. Another quarter of predict -- terrific production across-the-board, positions us well for the year ahead. You'll hear more shortly from Greg, Jeff and Michael about our segment results.
In line with the recent disruption in the banking sector, I'd like to share a reminder about how our business differs from those in the headlines. We often talk about the high-quality of our investment portfolio, and I'll get back to that. But first let me say a few words about our prudent management of that portfolio. The banking sector disruption started with an acceleration of liabilities in the form of withdrawals from demand deposit accounts. As we all know, there is no acceleration of our largest liabilities loss reserves. In other words, there is no such thing as we run on the bank in our business.
But the banking episode also highlighted the risk to the equity of an enterprise when the duration of assets and liabilities are mismatched. We manage the duration of our assets relative to our liabilities. Such as on an economic basis, we've effectively defeased[Phonetic] our insurance liabilities. In other words, increases or decreases in interest rates generally have offsetting impacts on the present value of both our investment portfolio and our outstanding insurance liabilities. This essentially botches the economic impact of changes in interest rates.
As we've explained in response to your questions over the years, this is a reason why we didn't reach for yield by increasing duration in the low-interest rate environment over the past decade and a half. In addition to duration, the Bank's solvency issues also highlighted the importance of thoughtfully managing liquidity. Quarter-in and quarter-out, we've consistently generated strong cash flows from operations.
Our cash flows from premiums alone over the course of the year, our consistently greater than our annual payments for claims and expenses. That was true throughout the 2008 financial crisis and more recently throughout the pandemic. We also have a steady and reliable stream of cash flows from our very-high quality fixed-income portfolio. In addition to the periodic interest payments we receive on the bonds we hold, the proceeds from our maturing investments each month, provide an additional source of liquidity. Back to the high-quality of our investment portfolio, macroeconomic uncertainty reminds us how important that is and the quality of our holdings and our disciplined focus on risk-adjusted returns distinguish us.
Our fixed-income investments are highly-diversified. They have an average credit rating of AA and comprise 93% of our investments. Our alternative investments are also high-quality and well-diversified. Page 20 of our webcast presentation includes further details. To address another topic that's been in the news lately, Page 21 of the webcast presentation includes information demonstrating the relatively nominal risk we have in our investment portfolio, related to commercial real-estate. Real-estate represents a small percentage of our total invested assets. Our fixed-income real-estate investments are very-high quality and the largest component of our non-fixed income real-estate investments is wholly-owned properties. The wholly-owned properties are carried at their depreciated historical cost. In other words, they were never written up when market values were high. And the appraised value of the portfolio is well-above book-value. The portfolio has also produced a strong free-cash flow yield. In short, whether we're talking about underwriting or investing, Travelers is built to manage through uncertain times. Before I turn the call over to Dan, I'll share with you that we just returned from our annual conference with our most significant distribution partners who collectively represent more than half of our premium. We all left with the continued confidence with our relationships with these business leaders and their firms are strong as ever, and feeling tremendous support for the strategic initiatives that we have underway. It's a great reminder that our position with distribution sets us apart and this is an important competitive advantage, it's hard to replicate. To sum things up, we're off to a great start for the year with another quarter of strong profitability and growth driven by our underwriting and investment expertise. At the same time, we continue to successfully execute on our innovation strategy. Which just contributed to significantly accelerated premium growth, superior returns, and industry low-volatility over the past decade. The best talent in the industry, we remain well-positioned for success to a wide range of economic and operating environments, and confident in our ability to continue to create shareholder value over-time. With that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Dan.
