The results from Enact and LTC were partially offset by adjusted operating losses of $15 million in life and annuities and $38 million in corporate and other. Life and annuities included an adjusted operating loss in life insurance of $33 million, reflecting the unfavorable impacts of seasonally high mortality, as well as adjusted operating income of $11 million from fixed annuities and $7 million from variable annuities. The loss in corporate and other was driven by unfavorable tax timing of $15 million that we expect to reverse by year-end and higher expenses related to new growth initiatives with CareScout Services. Now, taking a closer look at Enact’s performance on slide 6, Enact delivered a very strong first quarter, including high-quality growth in its insured portfolio and strong profitability.
Enact’s adjusted operating income of $135 million to Genworth was down 6% versus the prior year as a result of a smaller reserve release in the quarter. Primary insurance in force increased 4% year over year to $264 billion, driven by new insurance written and continued elevated persistency. Genworth’s share of Enact’s book value, including AOCI, has increased to $3.8 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2024, while at the same time, Enact has delivered significant capital returns to Genworth. As shown on slide 7, Enact had a favorable $54 million pre-tax reserve release in the first quarter, which drove a loss ratio of 8%. The reserve release primarily reflects favorable cure performance from early 2023 and prior delinquencies. Enact has a strong estimated PMIERs sufficiency ratio of 163%, approximately $1.9 billion above PMIERs requirements.
Enact continues to deliver strong cash flows to Genworth. The combination of Enact’s quarterly dividend and its share repurchase program generated a total of $61 million in proceeds to Genworth in the first quarter. As Enact announced yesterday, it has increased its quarterly dividend and expanded its share repurchase program by $250 million and continues to expect to return a total of $300 million to its shareholders in 2024. Based on our 81.5% ownership position, we expect to receive $245 million from Enact for the full year. Enact’s updated program enables Genworth to potentially receive proceeds earlier in the year than previously anticipated, which would allow us to be more opportunistic with our own share repurchases throughout the year.
Turning to long-term care insurance, starting on slide 8, we are making strong progress on our strategy to achieve economic breakeven on a go-forward basis in the legacy LTC business. We continue to significantly reduce tail risk through our multi-year rate action plan, or MYRAP, and legal settlements. As of the end of the first quarter, we have achieved in-force rate actions worth approximately $28 billion on a net present value basis and have seen a cumulative policyholder response rate of 53% to reduce benefits. Upon the completion later this year of the third and final legal settlement on our large Choice II block, approximately 70% of the LTC block will have been offered reduced benefit options under these settlements. Slide 9 shows more details on the in-force rate action filings approved in recent periods, as well as the positive trend we’ve seen in policyholder benefit reduction elections.
We continue to expect strong approvals for the full year. As more policyholders elect to reduce their benefits as a part of the MYRAP or the recent legal settlements, they’re able to maintain meaningful coverage while reducing generous tail risk on these policies and further protecting our ability to take claims over the long term. As we said before, we manage the US life insurance companies on a standalone basis. They operate as a closed system leveraging existing reserves and capital to cover future claims and other obligations. We will not put capital into the legacy life insurance companies, and given the long tail nature of our LTC insurance policies, with peak claim years still well over a decade away, we also do not expect capital returns from this segment.
As shown on slide 10, we had total LTC statutory pre-tax income of $151 million, reflecting a significant benefit from in-force rate actions, and legal settlements of $462 million. Slide 11 shows our very strong overall statutory pre-tax income for the US life insurance companies of $258 million. This was led by LTC and the favorable impacts of in-force rate actions and legal settlements, as well as a $97 million benefit to variable annuities from equity market and interest rate movements in the quarter. In addition, first-quarter results reflect the net favorable impact of seasonally high mortality, which typically trends lower through the remainder of the year. The consolidated risk-based capital ratio for Genworth Life Insurance Company, or GLIC, was 314% at the end of March, compared to 303% at the end of last year, driven by strong statutory earnings.
GLIC’s consolidated balance sheet remains sound, with capital and surplus as of the end of March of $3.5 billion. Our final statutory results will be available on our investor website with our first-quarter filings later this month. Moving to our investment portfolio, which is summarized on slide 12, we remain confident in our positioning and believe we have the right strategy, given the products in our portfolio and the long duration of our liabilities, with very limited liquidity risk. As a reminder, the majority of our assets are in investment-grade fixed maturities that we generally buy and hold to support the US life insurance companies liabilities, with unrealized gains and losses impacting equity through changes in other comprehensive income.
The portfolio continues to benefit from the high interest rate environment, and we continue to monitor our commercial real estate exposure, which is approximately 16% of our total portfolio. It has a manageable maturity schedule and is concentrated in higher quality investment-grade assets, with office exposure less than 20% of our real estate investments. Next, turning to the holding company on slide 13, we received $61 million of capital from Enact during the first quarter, which included accelerated returns from its share repurchase program. We ended the quarter with $253 million of cash and liquid assets. Outflows in the quarter included $78 million of other items largely related to annual employee benefit payments that are reimbursed by our subsidiaries throughout the year.
Tom reviewed our capital allocation strategy, and I’ll reiterate that our top priorities, shown on slide 14, are to invest in long-term growth through CareScout, return cash to shareholders through our share repurchase program when our share price is below intrinsic value, and opportunistically pay down debt when attractive to us. We continued to return capital to shareholders via share repurchases in the first quarter, repurchasing $63 million at an average price of $6.17 per share and another $12 million through April 30. We have $266 million remaining under our current authorization as of the end of April and continue to expect to allocate roughly $125 million to $150 million to share repurchases in 2024. We were able to execute repurchases at an accelerated pace in the first quarter due to cash received late in the fourth quarter from Enact through the first quarter from Enact’s share repurchase program and due to our share price being below our intrinsic value.
