Generating over $1 billion of adjusted EBITDA in 2020, our business portfolio is well positioned to sustain above market growth and strong cash flows over time.
Recent notable examples include, we are increasing all US hourly wages to at least $15 per hour by July, which supports the financial well-being of our employees.
With HYLA, we recently passed a significant milestone repurposing our 100 million device.
Recently, we surpassed $100 million invested through Assurant Ventures, our venture capital arm.
We continue to see strong growth in Global Lifestyle, increasing earnings by 7% year-over-year.
Collectively, all of our investments have helped lead the 15 new client program launches in 2015.
We're now providing over 30 trading programs around the world.
In Global Automotive, we continue to benefit from our scale and expertise as we now cover over 50 million vehicles.
Net operating income excluding reportable catastrophes grew 17% as we benefited from favorable non-GAAP loss experience, including improved underwriting results.
Within our Lender-placed business, we continue to play a vital role in supporting the mortgage industry as we track over 31 million loans.
Multifamily housing increased policies by 9% year-over-year to almost $2.5 million as we continue to grow through our affinity partnerships and PMC channel, including seven of the top 10 largest PMCs in the US.
Over the last two years through our partnership with market leaders and on-demand delivery, we tripled the number of deliveries we protect over 1 billion deliveries.
Net operating income excluding cats grew by 13% to $182 million and earnings per share increased 16% to $3.03, demonstrating improved results in Global Housing and continued momentum in Global Lifestyle.
We now expect 10% to 14% growth in operating earnings per share excluding catastrophes versus our initial expectation of 9% earnings per share growth.
EPS expansion from the $9.88 in 2020 will be driven by high single-digit earnings growth mainly from Global Lifestyle and the lower corporate loss.
Results will also benefit from share repurchases, including the completion of our three-year $1.35 billion objective in the initial return of net proceeds from the Global Preneed sale.
Looking at adjusted EBITDA, excluding catastrophes, the first quarter generated $302 million, an increase of 15% year-over-year.
We ended March with $332 million of holding company liquidity, after returning $80 million to shareholders through common stock dividends and buybacks during the quarter.
In March, we announced our plan to sell the business for $1.3 billion to CUNA Mutual Group.
This segment reported net operating income of $129 million in the first quarter, an increase of 7% driven by Global Automotive and Connected Living.
In Global Automotive, earnings increased $7 million or 18%, results included a $4 million one-time benefit as well as a gain on investment income related to a specialty asset class from our TWG acquisition, which we don't expect to recur.
Connected Living grew earnings by 3%.
However, this was muted by a $7 million favorable client recoverable with an extended service contracts in the prior year period.
For the quarter Lifestyle's adjusted EBITDA increased 11% to $193 million, four points above net operating income growth.
Lifestyle revenue decreased by $85 million.
This was driven mainly by a $98 million reduction in mobile trade-in revenue, primarily due to the contract change we disclosed last year.
For the full year, we continue to expect Lifestyle revenues to be in line with last year at approximately $7.3 billion.
Since year-end, we've increased covered mobile devices by 600,000 subs driven by continued growth in North America and Asia-Pacific.
For 2021, we still expect Global Lifestyle's net operating income to grow in the high single-digits compared to the $437 million reported in 2020.
Net operating income for the first quarter totaled $67 million compared to $74 million in the first quarter of 2020.
The decrease was largely due to $22 million of higher reportable catastrophes mainly related to the extreme winter weather particularly from areas like Texas.
Excluding catastrophe losses, earnings increased $50 million or 17%.
Looking at the placement rate, the modest sequential increase to 1.6% was attributable to a shift in business mix and is not an indication of a broader macro housing market shifts.
Revenue decreased 2% related to a reduction in our specialty product offerings, which included the impact from the exit of small commercial as well as lower REO volume.
This decrease was partially offset by growth in multifamily housing, which grew 8% year-over-year, driven mainly by our affinity partners.
At Corporate, the net operating loss was $22 million, which was flat year-over-year.
For the full year, we continue to expect the Corporate net operating loss to improve to approximately $90 million as we eliminate enterprise support costs associated with Global Preneed.
With Preneed moving to discontinued operations, our investment portfolio is now approximately $7.9 billion, excluding cash and cash equivalent.
Given Preneed's relatively longer average duration of around 10 years compared to the rest of our business, following the sale of Preneed, our go-forward duration will drop to between 4.5 years to 5 years.
Turning to holding company liquidity, we ended the first quarter with $332 million, which is $107 million above our current minimum target level.
In the first quarter, dividends from our operating segments totaled $183 million.
$42 million of share repurchases, $43 million in common and preferred stock dividends, and $10 million mainly related to the acquisition of TRYGLE and Assurant Venture Investments.
Also in January, we redeemed the remaining $50 million of our March 2021 note.
And our mandatory convertible shares converted to approximately 2.7 million common shares during the quarter.
We've now completed over 70% of our $1.35 billion capital return objective from 2019 to 2021 and remain confident that we will meet this objective by the end of this year.
In the second quarter through April 30, we repurchased an additional 95,000 shares for $14 million.

Summary:
Net operating income excluding cats grew by 13% to $182 million and earnings per share increased 16% to $3.03, demonstrating improved results in Global Housing and continued momentum in Global Lifestyle.
We now expect 10% to 14% growth in operating earnings per share excluding catastrophes versus our initial expectation of 9% earnings per share growth.
This segment reported net operating income of $129 million in the first quarter, an increase of 7% driven by Global Automotive and Connected Living.
For 2021, we still expect Global Lifestyle's net operating income to grow in the high single-digits compared to the $437 million reported in 2020.