And we are hitting another four. We have more than 100 specialists who help our clients with consultancy and advice. Due to the importance of this segment for the bank and for Brazil, we will continue to strengthen our structures and operations. Well then here are the details for our third quarter. Net income was up 2.3%, reaching BRL4.6 billion for the quarter. On the annual comparison, we had an 11.5% decrease. Our credit provision expenses fell BRL1.1 billion and delinquency ratios have already shown improvement. Client NII for the quarter was lower mainly due to the product mix effect. On the other hand, market NII has continued to show evolution. It was already positive in this quarter and will continue to improve and be positive in the fourth quarter and along the year 2024.
Our insurance group continues to post excellent results and will be ending the year with revenues greater than BRL100 billion and over 23% ROE, but will be showing more details in the next slides. Now let’s talk about our loan portfolio. In corporate clients, it was a 1.8%, mainly driven by large corporate that was up by 3.2%. And SME segment posted a 1.1% contraction. But we are still very restricted for credit origination to small companies. Given the economic situation in this segment, which is experiencing higher delinquency ratios, we are set to increase origination in the segment in the fourth quarter. We are already increasing it. And due to the credit policy adjustments, our individuals portfolio were down by 0.1% even though credit origination was growing in the third quarter when compared to previous quarters.
And we will continue to increase credit origination in the fourth quarter. As interest rates fall, we see demand for loans improving in the lower risk segments such as vehicles, payroll deductible loans and real estate loans. The daily average of total lending in this quarter was 14% higher than the previous quarter, being 26% higher in individuals and 11% higher in corporates. Even considering that we grew during the quarter and we have not yet recovered in all portfolios by the same pace. It is a fact that lower origination and lower rates mix are still squeezing the client NII. We believe that we will get to normalized origination levels throughout the third quarter and throughout the year ’24. At this moment, we are operating below the guidance range.
All our reviews and reevaluation of credit models and policies have shown important results. The new credit vintages are still performing 50% better than the 2021 vintages. And we continue to monitor these delinquency ratios in the short run and the volumes. The new vintages already account for 57% of the individual’s portfolio in the retail banking segment. The quarter’s ALL was BRL9.2 billion. For credit provision expense it was 10.9% lower than the previous quarter, so this lowered the cost of risk to 4.2%. The year’s guidance range goes from BRL36.5 billion to BRL39.5 billion. At this time we are expecting to end the year close to the top as we indicated previously. Despite the improvement, we are still operating with a high level of cost of risk because this is a long-tailed process.
The total credit provision balance was basically stable and quite robust, standing at BRL59 billion, accounting for 9.4% of the loan portfolio. Our coverage ratio for over 90 days fell to 155%. However, excluding 100% provisioned loans, this ratio remained practically flat at 239%. As we have been saying, we see the reduction in the level of coverage as something natural for the end of the credit cycle and at a moment when credit origination still low. Our cover coverage ratio is certainly starting to improve with lower NPL and increased credit origination. Speaking about NPL creation, that it was the highlight of the quarter. There was improvement across all segments. It reached BRL10 billion, which was a significant drop when compared to the previous quarter.
In terms of individuals, total BRL6.5 billion and with companies accounted for BRL3.5 billion. NPL creation is set to continue to improve over the next quarters. Our 90-day delinquency ratio was down by 10 basis points with the same level of improvement for individuals and large corporates. In the SME segment, there was still a worsening in the ratio, but less than in recent quarters despite an unfavorable denominator effect due to the declining in the portfolio. We believe that SME delinquency will at least stabilize in the fourth quarter since the vintages have been posting much better performance. Now, short-term delinquency, you can see that there was an improvement across all segments, 30 basis points in total delinquencies, 20 basis points in individuals, 40 in SMEs, and 80 basis points in large corporates.
