Although in most states, we're recognized as an essential industry and essential workers, currently more than 95% of our General insurance group and approximately 80% of our Title Insurance associates are working remotely.
On a diluted per share basis, that equates to $0.47, which is an increase of 17.5% from the prior year.
The pre-tax fair value decline of approximately $963 million was really the main contributing factor to the first quarter reported net loss and corresponding reduction in book value.
Consolidated net premiums and fees earned registered strong growth of a little over 10% to $1.5 billion.
The General Insurance group increased about 2.5%, and our Title group grew by almost 24%, as Carolyn will address in a few moments.
Net investment income grew nearly 2% to a due to a larger invested asset base and greater dividend income, which arises from the relatively higher-yielding equity portfolio and that was offset by slightly lower yields on the bond portfolio.
From an underwriting perspective, this quarter's consolidated combined ratio of 94.9%, marked about a 1.1 percentage point improvement over 2019.
Consolidated claim reserves developed slightly favorable in both periods, reducing the reported claim ratio by 0.8 and 1.6 percentage points for the current and prior year quarters, respectively.
Total cash and invested assets decreased to $13.5 billion at the end of March.
Driving this change was the combination of strong operating cash flow of $216 million offset by, as I mentioned earlier, the substantial unrealized market depreciation in both the equity as well as the fixed income portfolios.
As a reminder, the composition of our portfolio is approximately 76% allocated to bonds and short-term investments and 24% to equity securities.
Our equity portfolio consists of approximately $100 million that are predominantly large-cap, value-oriented, dividend-paying companies.
The value of our portfolio equity portfolio declined by approximately 24% during the quarter to an unrealized loss position of roughly $22 million at the end of March.
As of yesterday's close, the portfolio had rebounded to a $175 million unrealized gain.
Old Republic's book value per share decreased from $19.98 at the end of 2019 to $17.29 at the end of March.
As previously noted, the most significant contributor to this decline relates to the $2.53 per share reduction in the fair value of the equity portfolio.
Operating income of $0.47 was additive to the book value, and we returned capital to our shareholders in the form of the regular cash dividend, and that amounted to $0.21 per share or $0.84 on an annual basis.
And this year's annual dividend payout represents about a 5% increase over last year's regular cash dividend rate.
This year, 2020, marks the 79th year of paying uninterrupted regular cash dividends as well as consecutive years of increasing the dividend rate for the past 39 years.
We ended the quarter with $6.1 billion of total capitalization, low debt leverage ratios and adequate liquidity throughout the enterprise.
During the quarter, we did, in fact, obtain regulatory approval and received a $37.5 million extraordinary dividend from our two principal mortgage insurance companies.
Total statutory capital at the end of March continues to remain strong and registered $410 million.
A large percentage of the in-force file was written in 2009 and earlier years.
In addition, approximately 60% of the loans that are insured have previously been modified or refinanced under the government's home affordability programs, the HARP and HAMP programs.
So as the release indicates and as we show in the financial supplement, compared to first quarter 2019, General Insurance saw quarter-over-quarter operating revenue increase by 2.9% and quarter-over-quarter operating income was up 1.7%.
Net premiums earned in commercial auto rose by 3.6% quarter-over-quarter, attributable to the positive effect of rate increases that we have continued to attain on the commercial auto line.
As can be seen in the financial supplement, workers' compensation experienced a 9% drop in net premiums earned quarter-over-quarter.
Quarter-over-quarter, the General Insurance overall composite ratio rose slightly to 95.6%, up from 95.3%, and this was attributable to a slightly higher expense ratio.
The first quarter expense ratio came in at 25.8% compared to the first quarter of 2019 when it stood at 25.5%.
Our first quarter commercial auto claim ratio came in at 77% compared with 79.1% in the same period of 2019.
The first quarter claim ratio came in at 71% compared to 70.7% in the first quarter of 2019, and we continue to remain very pleased with this result, obviously.
For commercial auto, workers' comp and GL combined, given that we typically provide these coverages together to an account, we like to also look at that combined results, and the quarter-over-quarter claim ratio for those three combined was flat at 74.1%.
And in the latest quarter, we saw favorable development of 7/10 of one percentage point.
For the first quarter, total premium and fee revenue was $628.1 million, which was an increase of nearly 24% over the first quarter of 2019.
Agency premiums were up around 21% and direct operating revenue approximately 31%.
In terms of operating profitability, the Title group reported pre-tax operating income of $43.3 million for the quarter compared to $20.5 million in the first quarter of 2019, an increase of 110.6%.

Summary:
So as the release indicates and as we show in the financial supplement, compared to first quarter 2019, General Insurance saw quarter-over-quarter operating revenue increase by 2.9% and quarter-over-quarter operating income was up 1.7%.