Welcome, everybody. My name is Beatriz Izard, Head of Investor Relations at Línea Directa. We published our 3Q results earlier this morning, and I have here with me our CFO, Carlos Rodríguez Ugarte, to present this report. With this short introduction, over to you, Carlos.
Thank you very much, Beatriz. Good morning to everybody. I will go straight to page 5. The story of this quarter, in a nutshell, is a significant improvement of margins. The profit before taxes for the third quarter stood at EUR 0.5 million, driven by the substantial reduction in the combined ratio. We continue to put margins before growth and maintain our strict control of overheads and process optimization, as shown by our remarkable expense ratio. Capital position remains robust. Turning to page 7 on the Spanish motor sector market. CPI takes a softer line, although headline inflation is expected to get to 3.6% at year-end and 4.1% for the underlying. Growth in the motor segment gains momentum, even if it's still trailing behind cost. Although the increase are modest, the change in the cycle is confirmed.
Turning to page number 8. Home sales continues to decline due to high financial costs and loss of household purchasing power. We should expect this trend to continue this year and in 2024. Nevertheless, home insurance revenue grew by 5.8%, driven by average premiums on the rise. As with regard to the Spanish health market, turnover for the industry continues to report significant growth at 7%, although we have seen some signs of a slowdown in the growth of new policy holders in response to the economic environment. Turning to page number 11, our key priority is to restore technical performance. Expense ratio was excellent at 19.5% for the first nine months of the year and 19.3% in the quarter standalone. The claims ratio improved significantly in the quarter. Rate action continues to earn through our book.
We believe we are taking the appropriate measures to achieve a prudent growth and profitability, applying rates at the current level of risk. Financial results was down 3.7%. Recurring earnings, though, are on the rise on the back of fixed income, higher investment yields, remuneration of deposits, and the revaluation of the hedging derivative. Excluding realized gains, financial results will be up 19%. Turning to page 12. Core messages in IFRS 17 are exactly the same as in IFRS 4, with the technical result displaying a significant improvement in the quarter. Here, the key message is that comparison with the former accounting norm expands as the year evolves. Further, IFRS 9 is not restated for 2022, adding an extra layer of complexity for comparison purposes. Nevertheless, a full reconciliation can be provided by the IR team should you need it. Turning to page 13.
Rate actions have driven a sliding effect on retention and increased shopping around. We are focused on rebuilding a technical surplus. I will now turn to page number 14. The auto industry continues to show profitability challenge through the third quarter 2023, with loss trends outpacing premium growth. We are responding with determination to the changes we experience in loss trends with both rate and underwriting actions. The combined ratio, albeit still very high, begins to show a changing trend, with a notable improvement in the quarter standalone. In addition to our focus on addressing profitability, we continue to work on advancing our capabilities on customer service and perceived quality. We are further targeting our digitalization and customer experience that will improve our ease of use and low cost value proposition.
We continue with the general operational expenses discipline, as reflected in the exceptional 16.6% expense ratio. Turning to page 15. Premiums grew at 4.4% in the home line of business, despite rate actions also triggering some sliding effect on retention. The combined ratio rose to 97.7%, affected by atmospheric events and water damage in the quarter. Atmospheric events added 4.8 percentage points or EUR 5.1 million in the first nine months of the year. That compares with 2.6 percentage points as of September 2022. As with regard to the health business, premiums reflect certain slowdown in policy growth in response to the economic cycle and mix of businesses. Loss ratio is steadily improving with a prudent risk selection.
Expense ratio shows us the absence of the proportional insurance commission, which is no longer received as of January 2023. Please, let's move now to slide number 17, where we break down management ratios by line of businesses. Despite a still very high loss ratio, motor shows a changing trend in the quarter, with a significant improvement. Home, as I already mentioned, includes atmospheric events and water damage this quarter. Health keeps steadily improving with prudent underwriting. Consolidated expense ratio improved to 19.5%, with motor at an outstanding 16.6%. Turning to page number 18, consolidated loss ratio reached 87.3%, 84.3% in the quarter standalone. Motor continues to be affected by high average cost and higher frequency, especially in the own damage guarantee. Yet overall, we begin to experience a changing trend in the quarter.
In addition to rates, we continue to improve our underwriting efforts to try to ensure the business we are writing is classified and priced adequately. Further, we were streamlining the management of claims expected to bear results in 2024. Home this quarter is mainly driven by the higher cost of atmospherics, as I mentioned before. As regards expenses, we are being extremely strict when it comes to cost control and in driving efficiency new measures. Consolidated expense ratio further dropped to 19.5%. Turning to page 20 on financial results. Earnings were down 3.7%, explained by less realized gain in the first 9 months of the year. Recurrent financial result is up 19%, backed by higher investment yields in the fixed income, the revaluation of the hedging derivative, and the remuneration of deposits.
On slide 21, you can see the overall yield of the portfolio is up to 288 basis points, excluding net realized gains. We are reinvesting in short-term maturities, and the overall duration of the fixed income portfolio was reduced to 3 years. Moving on to our solvency position, the company capitalization remains strong at 180%. The company is now generating capital with this positive quarterly result. Yet, we had also negative impact affecting eligible own funds, including the change in the market value of the available for sale portfolio, driven by higher interest rates. For its part, SCR increased by EUR 2.7 million in the quarter, driven by two opposite effects. On the one hand, lower market and counterparty risk, offset by higher underwriting risk as a result of higher cost of claims incurred.
To summarize and conclude, we closed the quarter with an encouraging change of trend in our combined ratio and a strong balance sheet. We believe we are taking the appropriate measures on addressing profitability. In addition, we continue to work on advancing our capabilities on innovation, customer service, and perceived quality. We are targeting further our digitalization and customer experience that will improve our ease of use and low cost value proposition. We will continue with expense discipline, as reflected in our exceptional expense ratio. Thank you. I will now hand the call over to Beatriz to begin the Q&A session.
Thank you very much for the presentation, Carlos. First, we'll begin with the questions received from the conference call.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star five on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star five again. Please ensure that your device is unmuted locally before proceeding with your question. Our first question comes from Freya Kong, from Bank of America. Now your line is open.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. In motor, it's good to see that you're prioritizing margins over volumes. How much rate do you think you and the rest of the market still need to push through to get back to pre-COVID levels? Or are you expecting claims inflation to moderate and potentially turn negative to help on this? And secondly, other than rate, what other underwriting actions are you taking, and how much improvement do you expect this to drive over the coming year? Thank you.
Well, on the rate side of the business, I mean, for Línea Directa, I think year-on-year, I mean, the core business in the motor insurance, average premiums have increased very close to 10%. I think the market, the latest numbers we have seen is 4.4% in terms of average premium, so we are well above the market. Looking forward, I don't see CPI becoming negative, so I think CPI for the next year is gonna be in the neighborhood of 3%, 3-3.5%. So our intention is to keep pushing average premiums on the rise, at least, to cover the increase in CPI.
I think, as I tried to explain on over the call, I think the name of the game today is, you know, technical margin, improve our margins, and I think we still need to increase average premiums. It is true that if you take a look at the market, many of the companies are following up, you know, are increasing average premiums, but I still see some companies or some competitors that are being very aggressive on pricing, which is something that I think will turn around, you know, negatively, you know, looking forward. In terms of underwriting, I mean, we are very much focused on trying to price accordingly to risk premiums. Risk premiums for the business has increased due to inflation costs, due to repair costs, and that is basically what we are doing.
Of course, in that approach, we are losing some clients. We are losing the clients we want to lose. You know, we are probably cleaning a little bit the portfolio, you know, of worse clients. It's something that we didn't do since 2020. I think the market since COVID, you know, was not in the mood of cleaning portfolio, and that is something that we have been doing for the year. That is shown on our retention, that has suffered a little bit more than we are used to.