And what does that mean, it is on a combined ratio and that will probably get you to approximately an 86.9%.
But from our perspective, if one chooses to slip off the rose colored glasses for a moment, we generated 90.4%.
And in the process, we achieved a 16.6% return on equity.
Operating income increased by more than 100% to $247 million or $1.32 per share, which is compared with $121 million or $0.65 per share.
From a production perspective, gross premiums written grew by $525 million or 23.2% to a record of almost $2.8 billion.
Net premiums written grew by $446 million or 23.7% to another record of more than $2.3 billion.
This session rate was fairly consistent at 16.6% in the current quarter.
Breaking down the results further, the Insurance segment grew net premiums written by 23.3% to more than $2 billion, reflecting increases in all lines of business.
Professional liability led this growth with 58.7% followed by commercial auto of 28.1%, other liability of 25.3%, short tail lines of 8.6% and workers compensation of 7.7%.
The Reinsurance & Monoline Excess segment grew 26.7% to $318 million with an increase in casualty reinsurance of 36% and Monoline Excess of 27.4%, partially offset by a small decline in property reinsurance of 1.4%.
The increase in net premiums written on a year-to-date basis was more than 20%, resulting from growth in exposure and compounding rate improvements that will continue to earn through in the coming quarters.
This was evident by the increase in net premiums earned of 19% in the current quarter.
Included in the quarter were current accident year catastrophe losses of $74 million or 3.5 loss ratio points, compared with $73 million or 4.2 loss ratio points in the prior year.
As a result, quarterly underwriting profits increased 80% to $200 million, slightly off the record quarterly underwriting results in the second quarter of this year.
The reported loss ratio improved 1.3 loss ratio points to 62.4% from the prior year, primarily driven by rate improvement in business mix.
Prior year loss reserves developed favorably by approximately $1.5 million in the current quarter.
The expense ratio improved 2 points to 28% in large part due to the growth in net premiums earned, which is outpacing underwriting expenses by approximately 7.5%.
Closing out the underwriting performance, our current accident year combined ratio, excluding catastrophes, was 86.9% for the quarter, compared with 89.8% for the prior year quarter.
Net investment income increased 26.1% to $180 million, driven by strong results in investment funds.
Despite the ongoing growth in invested assets, the fixed maturity portfolio represents 69% of the total invested assets and the associated investment income declined quarter-over-quarter, due to the persistent low interest rate environment.
Strong operating cash flows of more than $825 million in the quarter contributed to the increased cash and cash equivalents as of September 30th.
This resulted in a slightly shorter duration of 2.3 years in the current quarter, compared with 2.4 years in the second quarter.
Pre-tax net investment gains in the quarter of $20 million is primarily comprised of realized gains on investments of $36 million, partially offset by a reduction in unrealized gains on equity securities of $19 million.
The effective tax rate was 19.6% in the quarter, which largely benefited from equity based compensation that predominantly vests in August of each year.
Overall strong performance resulted in annualized return on beginning of year equity of 16.6% as Rob alluded to.
Stockholders equity increased by $70 million to approximately $6.6 billion in the quarter after regular dividends of $23 million and share repurchases of $93 million.
The company repurchased approximately 1.3 million shares at an average price of $72.03 per share in the quarter.
Book value per share increased 1.5% in the quarter and book value per share before dividends and share repurchases increased 2.5%.
As far as the top line goes, obviously the growth is shy of the 24%.
When you think about that growth, sort of, this shy of 40% of the growth is coming from rate, about 59% is coming in some form of exposure whether it's new policies or autopremiums or whatever.
We have started 47 of the 54 operating units from scratch.
Not much to add on the investment portfolio, obviously, the duration as I had referenced and Rich covered is sitting there at 2.3, book yield is about 2.3.

Summary:
Net premiums written grew by $446 million or 23.7% to another record of more than $2.3 billion.