Moving to credit performance on Slide 9. Total net charge-offs were 4.92%, 220 basis points higher than the prior year and up 81 basis points from the prior quarter. In Card, as we anticipated, delinquency formation is improving as more recent vintages season. The 30-plus day delinquency rate was down 4 basis points versus the prior quarter. From a vintage perspective, our 2023 card vintage is performing relatively in line with our 2022 vintage. Both vintages remain profitable and above our return thresholds. This performance has been contemplated in our full year net charge-off guidance. We executed some incremental tightening during the first quarter, which will influence our new account growth for the year. Personal loan net charge-offs were 4.02%, 208 basis points higher than the prior year and up 63 basis points from the prior quarter.
We expect losses in this product to trend higher in the near term before plateauing beginning late this year or into 2025. Turning to the allowance for credit losses on Slide 10. Our credit reserve balances declined $25 million from the prior quarter, and our reserve rate increased by 9 basis points to 7.32%. The reserve rate increase was primarily driven by the reduction of seasonal transactor balances in the quarter. Given our expectation for total company losses to peak and plateau in mid- to late 2024 and we believe the credit reserve rate is likely at or near peak levels, assuming a stable macroeconomic environment and no significant unexpected changes in portfolio performance. Looking at Slide 11. Our common equity Tier 1 for the period was 10.9%, down 40 basis points sequentially.
The impacts from the increase in expenses in the CECL phase-in were offset by lower receivables and core earnings generation. We declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.70 per share of common stock. Concluding on Slide 12. We have made the following updates to our 2024 outlook. We are increasing our loan growth expectations to up low single digits. This primarily reflects our expectation of further decline in the payment rates, offsetting our view of flat to slightly negative sales growth this year and a modest contribution from new accounts. We are increasing our net interest margin range to 10.7% to 11%. This change was driven by 2 factors: first, the forward curve now reflects an expectation of 2 rate cuts this year versus our prior forecast of 4 cuts.
And second, we have been proactive in lowering our deposit rates. Our cumulative deposit beta is now about 70%, and we think there will be further opportunities to manage our deposit costs over the course of this year. We still expect our core operating expenses to be up mid-single digits, excluding card misclassification related costs and merger expenses. Our core operating expense trends are in line with our expectations and we believe the actions we took in the first quarter have substantially de-risked the probability of further increases to the remediation reserve. We are tightening our net charge-off range to 4.9% to 5.2%, based largely on current delinquency trends. Our base case remains at the lower end of the range. Finally, given the merger agreement, we have suspended share repurchases through closing and agreed not to increase the dividend.
To summarize, we continue to generate solid results and our financial performance underscores our steady stewardship of the organization as we move towards resolving compliance items and consummating our planned merger. This concludes our remarks. I’ll turn the call back over to our operator.
Operator: Thank you. This concludes today’s call. The Discover Investor Relations team will be available for questions. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.
End of Q&A:
