The release and corresponding financial supplement are available on assurant.com.
For the first time, Assurant was awarded a Bronze accreditation by EcoVadis, one of the largest sustainability ratings companies, ranking Assurant among the top 50% of all 75,000 participating companies.
In addition, this quarter we provided additional transparency to track our progress on our journey to build a more diverse and inclusive Assurant, with the recent disclosure of our EEO-1,which provides gender, race and ethnicity data by job category for our U.S.-based employees.
Looking at our financial performance year-to-date, net operating income per share excluding reportable catastrophes was $8.75, up 12% compared to the first nine months of last year.
Net operating income and adjusted EBITDA also excluding cats, both increased by 10% to $528 million and $862 million, respectively.
These results support our full year outlook of 10% to 14% growth in net operating income per share excluding reportable catastrophes, marking our fifth consecutive year of strong profitable growth.
We've also now completed our three-year $1.35 billion capital return objective from our 2019 Investor Day, a quarter ahead of schedule.
Following the close on the sale of Global Preneed in August, we've also made meaningful progress in returning an additional $900 million to shareholders.
In Global Lifestyle, we are on track to grow adjusted EBITDA by double digits in 2021 from $637 million in 2020, driven by Global Automotive and Connected Living.
Within Global Automotive, we benefited from increased scale, growing the number of vehicles we protect by 20%, over 52 million since The Warranty Group acquisition in 2018.
In Global Housing, we continue to be on track for another year of better than market returns, with an annualized operating ROE of nearly 15% for the first nine months of this year.
This includes $113 million of catastrophe losses, which further demonstrates the superior returns of this differentiated business.
Our Multifamily Housing business now supports over 2.5 million renters across the U.S. and has more than doubled earnings since 2015 through our strong partnerships with our affinity and property management company clients.
Our investments in digital capabilities, such as our cover 360 property management solution continues to drive more value for our partners and an enhanced customer experience.
Most of all, I'm humbled by our 15,000 employees, who through their dedication to serve our clients and our 300 million customers worldwide have successfully transformed Assurant.
Together, we have significantly strengthened our Fortune 300 company that should continue to deliver above-market growth and superior cash flow.
Gene's significant contributions to Assurant over the last 30 plus years, including as COO over his last five years have been instrumental in creating market-leading positions, producing profitable growth and transforming the organization.
In succeeding Gene, Keith Meier brings nearly 25 years of experience at Assurant to the COO role.
With over 30 years of experience, he currently leads the transformation and growth strategy for Auto and has been instrumental in our introduction of innovative new products like EB-1, our electric vehicle warranty protection.
As of November 1st, Assurant is partnering with T-Mobile to begin the nationwide rollout of in-store device repair services to approximately 500 stores, provided by Assurant's industry certified repair experts.
As a result, this significantly adds to our mobile device count, now at roughly 63 million as of November 1st.
With the growing availability and popularity of 5G-enabled smartphones, we expect to see our 30 plus trade-in and upgrade programs continue to grow.
Overall, we have processed nearly 18 million devices so far this year, reducing e-waste and increasing digital access with high quality, affordable phones.
In Global Automotive, policies increased by $4 million or 8% year-over-year and production is well above pre-pandemic levels as we continue to take advantage of our scale and talent.
As we drive innovation within Auto, we continued the global rollout of EV-1, an electric vehicle and hybrid protection product to North America.
EV-1 has now been rolled out in seven countries.
While the electric vehicle market is still in its infancy, our EV-1 product will allow Assurant an opportunity to better evaluate customer demand and leverage our learnings to position us well for the expected increase in electric vehicle adoption in the future.
Our Multifamily Housing business grew policies by 7% year-over-year from growth in our affinity partners as well as our PMC relationships, where we continue the rollout of our innovative cover 360 product.
For the quarter, we reported net operating income per share excluding reportable catastrophes of $2.73, up 5% from the prior year period.
Excluding cats, net operating income and adjusted EBITDA for the quarter, each increased 4% to $162 million and $262 million, respectively.
This segment reported net operating income of $124 million in the third quarter, continued earnings expansion within Connected Livings mobile business.
In Global Automotive, earnings increased $8 million or 21% from continued global growth in our U.S. national dealer and third-party administrator channels, including contributions from our AFAS and international OEM channels.
Connected Living earnings increased by $6 million or 9% year-over-year.
For the quarter, Lifestyle's adjusted EBITDA increased 17% to $177 million.
As we look at revenues, Lifestyle revenues increased by $158 million or 9%.
Within Connected Living, revenue increased 10% boosted by mobile fee income that was driven by strong trade-in volumes, including contributions from Hyla.
First, the 750,000 subscribers related to a run-off of European banking program previously mentioned, which is not expected to be a significant impact in our profitability.
In Global Automotive, revenue increased 8%, reflecting strong prior period sales of vehicle service contracts.
Industry auto sales remained elevated in the third quarter and we benefited from this trend as reflected in the year-over-year growth of our net written premium by 12%.
For the full year, Lifestyle revenues are expected to increase modestly compared to last years $7.3 billion, mainly driven by Global Auto and Connected Living growth.
For all of 2021, we still expect Global Lifestyle's net operating income to grow in the high single digits compared to 2020.
In addition, we expect our effective tax rate to return to a more normal level, approximately 23%.
Moving to Global Housing, net operating income excluding catastrophe losses was $81 million for the third quarter, including the $78 million of pre-announced catastrophe losses mainly from Hurricane Ida, net operating income totaled $3 million.
Excluding catastrophe losses, earnings decreased $19 million due to anticipated higher non-cat losses, which returned to levels more in line with historical averages.
At Corporate, the net operating loss was $21 million, an improvement of $4 million compared to the third quarter of 2020.
For the full year 2021, we now expect the Corporate net operating loss to be approximately $80 million, driven by favorable year-to-date results mainly from the one-time tax and real estate joint venture benefits in the second quarter.
This compares to our previous estimate of $85 million.
As we look forward to 2022, we would expect our net operating loss in Corporate to be closer to $90 million, more in line with historical trends.
Turning to the holding company liquidity, including the net proceeds from the sale of Preneed in August, we ended the third quarter with over $1.3 billion, well above our current minimum target level.
In the third quarter, dividends from operating segments totaled $127 million.
In addition to our quarterly corporate and interest expenses, we also had outflows from three main items, $323 million of share repurchases, $39 million in common stock dividends and $11 million mainly related to Assurant ventures investment.
In addition to completing our 2019 Investor Day objective of returning $1.35 billion to shareholders from 2019 through 2021, we have also completed roughly one-quarter of our objective to return $900 million in Global Preneed sale proceeds through share repurchases.
We are pleased with the results as the three investment exceeded a 7 times multiple on investment capital under their respective SPAC transaction terms.
These transactions combined with strong performance in the broader ventures portfolio led to a $75 million after-tax gain flowing through net income in the quarter.

Summary:
The release and corresponding financial supplement are available on assurant.com.
These results support our full year outlook of 10% to 14% growth in net operating income per share excluding reportable catastrophes, marking our fifth consecutive year of strong profitable growth.
For the quarter, we reported net operating income per share excluding reportable catastrophes of $2.73, up 5% from the prior year period.
In Global Automotive, revenue increased 8%, reflecting strong prior period sales of vehicle service contracts.
For all of 2021, we still expect Global Lifestyle's net operating income to grow in the high single digits compared to 2020.