As we mentioned in the release, while some of our associates have begun returning to our office, the majority of Old Republic's more than 9,000 associates continue to work remotely, ensuring that our services are delivered uninterrupted to our customers, agents and brokers and all in our remote work efforts have gone extremely well.
Earlier today, we announced second quarter net income excluding all investment gains and losses of $124 million or $0.42 per share and that's down approximately 7% from last year.
For the first six months of 2020, earnings per share was $0.89, up nearly 4%.
Consolidated net premiums and fees earned grew by 1.5 percentage points during the second quarter and 5.7% for the first half of this year.
Our Title Insurance Group as Craig said continues to set the pace with an increase of almost 10% for the quarter and 16% year-to-date.
General Insurance recorded relatively modest decline of 3.8% and 0.6% for the quarter and the first six months of the year, as the pandemic further impacted economic activity here in the US.
Net investment income dropped by 3.8% for the quarter and 1% year-to-date, and that's mostly caused by lower yields, which offset the generally higher invested asset balances.
Turning to underwriting results, this quarter's consolidated combined ratio ticked upward by less than 1 percentage point to 96% from 95.2% last year.
For this year's first six months, the combined ratio was 95.4% and that was largely unchanged from the same period a year ago.
Claim reserves on a consolidated basis dropped or developed favorably for the current quarter and year-to-date periods, reducing the reported claim ratios by 0.4 percentage points and 0.6 percentage points.
Prior year development for the comparable 2019 period was again favorable by 0.2 percentage points and 0.9 percentage points.
At June 30th, the allocation of the investment portfolio remained relatively consistent, roughly 75% is invested in bonds and short-term investments, with the remaining 25% directed toward equity securities.
Turning to -- during this year's first quarter, disruption to the financial markets resulted in a 24% or $963 million decline in the value of our equity portfolio.
During the second quarter, the financial markets improved considerably resulting in a $354 million recovery in the valuation of our equities portfolio.
And I would also add that as of yesterday's close, the portfolio had rebounded by an additional $126 million on top of the $354 million.
Old Republic's book value per share increased from $17.29 at March 31st to $19.68 at the end of June, driven both by operating income and increases in the fair value of the investment portfolio.
Book value is now up slightly for the year after consideration of the regular cash dividends paid year-to-date, which now generate nearly a 5% yield.
A significant portion of these still reported almost 41% of total delinquencies outstanding at June.
So in combination, these additional reserves resulted in the $5 million pre-tax operating loss and escalated claim ratios that were reported.
So as the release indicates, compared to the second quarter, General Insurance saw quarter-over-quarter operating revenue decreased by 3.6% and quarter-over-quarter pre-tax operating income decreased by 1.8%.
For the General Insurance Group, quarter-over-quarter combined ratio, we saw that it rose slightly to 98.4% from 98.1%, while the expense ratio remained very steady.
As shown in the financial supplement, net premiums earned in commercial auto decreased by 2.5% quarter-over-quarter, attributable to a decline in the exposure base resulting from the economic downturn, along with tighter risk selection criteria, offset by the positive effect of rate increases that have continued at a pace in the percentages in the lower teens.
Continuing with financial supplement, workers' compensation experienced a 14.3% decrease.
Turning to the line of coverage claim ratios in the financial supplement, our second quarter commercial auto claim ratio increased to 83.4% compared with 79.6% in the same period of 2019.
Turning to the workers' compensation claim ratio, the second quarter came in at 65.7%, compared to 69.3% in the second quarter of 2019.
As we discussed following the first quarter, it's important to remember that more than 90% of our COVID-19 workers' compensation claims emanate from loss-sensitive business such as large deductibles.
And furthermore, greater than 90% of the COVID-19 claims that we see in workers' compensation are mild in nature, with very low claim payments.
And ultimately less than 1% of those workers' comp claims are severe and less than 1% result in a fatality.
For commercial auto workers' comp, general liability combined given that we usually provide these coverages together to our customers, we like to look at it that way as well and quarter-over-quarter that claim ratio came in at 74.6% compared to 75.3% last year.
For the second quarter, total premium and fee revenue was up 9.9% and up 16.4% year-to-date.
Our pre-tax operating income of $65.4 million for the quarter, compared to $60.2 million in last year's second quarter was an increase of $5.2 million or 8.6%.
Year-to-date, pre-tax operating of $108.7 million compared to $80.8 million in the prior year-to-date period and the increase of $27.9 million or 34.6%.
Year-to-date 2020, our composite ratio of 93.1% compares favorably to the 94.3% reported for the comparable 2019 period.
Despite all the unknowns surrounding COVID-19, we remain cautiously optimistic going into the third quarter, with a robust order count in both purchase and refinance transactions, a strong real estate market, the 30-year mortgage rates remain historically low around 3% and expectations for these favorable rates to continue for this foreseeable future.
As with past challenges, we rely on the same guiding principles of integrity, managing for the long-run, financial strength, protection of our policyholders and the well-being of our employees and customers that have served us well over the last 100 plus years.

Summary:
Earlier today, we announced second quarter net income excluding all investment gains and losses of $124 million or $0.42 per share and that's down approximately 7% from last year.