The headline in this quarter is a record underwriting profit with premium growth of more than 11% and solid net investment income in gains, which resulted in a return on beginning of year equity of 14.5%.
The company reported net income of $230 million or $1.23 per share.
The breakdown is operating income of $202 million, or $1.08 per share, and after-tax net investment gains of $28 million or $0.15 per share.
Beginning with underwriting income and the components thereof, gross premiums written grew by more than $250 million, or 11.4% to almost $2.5 billion.
Net premiums written grew 11.1% to more than $2 billion, reflecting an increase in both segments.
The insurance segment grew approximately 10% on this $1.75 billion in the quarter, with an increase in all lines of business with the exception of workers’ compensation.
Professional liability led this growth with 37.6%, followed by commercial auto with 21%.
Other liability of 13.1% in short tail lines of 5.6%.
All lines of business grew in the reinsurance and monoline access segment, increasing net premiums written by 18.2% to more than $300 million.
Casualty reinsurance led this growth with 21.9% followed by 13.8% in property reinsurance, and 13.6% in monoline access.
Underwriting income increased approximately 250% to $183 million.
Our current accident year catastrophe losses were approximately $36 million or 1.9 loss ratio points, including 0.8 loss ratio points for COVID-19 related losses.
This compares with the prior year cat losses of $79 million or 4.7 loss ratio points, which included three loss ratio points for COVID-19 related losses.
The reported loss ratio was 60.6% in the current quarter, compared with 65.5% in 2020.
Prior year loss reserves developed favorably by $3 million or 0.2 loss ratio points in the current quarter.
Accordingly, our current accident year loss ratio excluding catastrophes was 58.9% compared with 61% a year ago.
The expense ratio was 29.5%, reflecting an improvement of 1.9 points over the prior year quarter.
The growth in net premiums earned continues to outpace underwriting expenses by a margin of almost 7%, significantly benefiting the expense ratio.
Summing this up, our accident year combined ratio excluding catastrophes was 88.4%, representing an improvement of four points over the prior year quarter.
Net investment income for the quarter was approximately $159 million.
We did begin to reinvest cash as interest rates rose in the quarter, however, continue to maintain a defensive position with more than $2 billion in cash and cash equivalents.
Our duration remains relatively short at 2.4 years, enabling us to further benefit from future increases in interest rates and at the same time, our credit quality remains strong at AA minus.
Pre-tax net investment gains in the quarter of $35 million is primarily made up of realized gains on investments of $76 million, partially offset by a reduction in unrealized gains on equity securities of $24 million, and an increase in the allowance for expected credit losses of $17 million.
Corporate expense partially increased due to debt extinguishment costs of $3.6 million relating to the redemption of hybrid securities on March 1.
To this end, you will have seen that we announced the redemption of our hybrid securities for June 1, which will result in debt extinguishment costs in the second quarter of approximately $8 million pre-tax.
Stockholders' equity increased more than $100 million to approximately $6.4 billion, after share repurchases and dividends of $51 million in the quarter.
The company repurchased approximately half a million shares for $30 million in 2021 at an average price per share of $63.82.
Our net unrealized gain position in stockholders equity declined by $90 million due to the rise in interest rates in the quarter.
Book value per share grew 2.4% before share repurchases and dividends.
And finally, cash flow from operations, more than doubled quarter-over-quarter to over $300 million.
You may have noticed that we got approached in 13 points of rate in the quarter, excluding workers’ compensation.
I did have a little bit of a discussion internally and we dug into it as to how do you compare this approaching 13 points of rate with what we saw on the fourth quarter.
And all of the other underwriting actions that we are taking, is still hanging in there at approximately 80%.
And our new business relativity metric, which is another data point we've shared with many of you in the past came in at 1.024%, which effectively what that means is on as much of an apples to apples basis as we are able to create in comparing a new account versus a renewal account, we are effectively surcharging a new account by 2.4% more.
As we've mentioned in the past, COVID is offering effectively a benefit of about 50 basis points, the expense ratio.
As Rich mentioned, we continue to maintain the duration on the shorter end at 2.4 years.
We have 6543 people that work together as a team in the interest of all stakeholders.
And we were able to achieve this quarter because of their efforts in spite of the challenges that exists in the world, particularly over the past 12 years.

Summary:
The company reported net income of $230 million or $1.23 per share.
The breakdown is operating income of $202 million, or $1.08 per share, and after-tax net investment gains of $28 million or $0.15 per share.