You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: The extraordinary circumstances of 2020 tested Assured Guaranty's business model, operations, and people once again and we delivered remarkably strong results in a year marked by a public health crisis and economic crisis, volatile financial markets, a tumultuous social and political environment.
We prepared well for the technological and organizational challenges of operating remotely and safely during the COVID-19 pandemic and our employees showed the dedication and capability to achieve strong results.
Most importantly, we saw the clear success of our efforts over many years with several in insured portfolio that would perform well in a severely distressed global economy.
The year's challenges made our 2020 accomplishments all the more impressive.
Our new business production totaled $389 million of direct PVP exceeded by $75 million -- the direct PVP we produced in every year but once since 2010.
The sole exception was the $553 million of direct PVP we produced in 2019 making the last two years direct production our best in this decade.
These strong results compare to a reliable base for future earnings for years to come.
In our core business, U.S. municipal bond insurance we guaranteed more than $21 billion of foreign primary and secondary markets, generated $292 million of PVP, both 10-year records for direct production.
We again set new per share records for shareholders' equity and adjusted operating shareholder's equity with totals at year-end of $85.66, $78.49 respectively.
During the year, our adjusted book value per share exceeded $100 for the first time.
At $114.87 year end of adjusted book value per share reflected the greatest single year increase since our IPO $17.88 and the second highest growth rate of 18%.
We retired a total of 16.2 million common shares mainly through highly accretive share repurchases at an average price of $28.23.
We spent 11% less in 2022 repurchase.
We repurchased 31% more shares than in 2019.
We returned a total of $515 million to shareholders through repurchases and dividends.
We also repurchased $23 million of outstanding debt.
Our Paris-based subsidiary Assured Guaranty SA was awarded ratings of AA by S&P and AA+ by KBRA and underwrote its first new transactions allowing us to seamlessly continue our continental European operations in the wake of Brexit.
We also transferred our portfolio of transactions insured by our UK subsidiary to the French company.
And we successfully integrated our asset management business in its first full year of operations and rebranded it Assured Investment Management.
2020 was a profitable year where we earned $256 million in adjusted operating income or $2.97 per share.
But our most compelling news of 2020 was our performance in U.S. public finance where conditions were volatile.
The benchmark 30 year AAA municipal market data interest rate began the year at 2.07%, jumped in March as high as 3.37%, bottomed down in August at a historic low of 1.27%.
In early spring investors were shocked by the potential scale of the pandemic's economic impact, municipal bond funds experienced method outflows.
At that time for PO analysts of any were predicting that 2020 will see $452 billion of municipal bonds issued the greatest annual par value on our volume on record.
This action by the Federal Reserve to help stabilize financial markets by maintaining short-term interest rates near zero and supporting the federal loan program.
These included $500 billion municipal liquid facility which reassured the bond market by providing a backup source of liquidity for states and municipal.
Investors returned to the municipal market with a heightened focus on credit quality, trading value stability and market liquidity all concerned to drive demand for our bond insurance.
And investment grade credit spreads widened significantly before [Indecipherable] BBB credits.
As a result bond insurance penetration rose to 7.6% of par volume sold in the primary market, almost a full percentage point above the past decade's previous high.
Assured Guaranty led this growth with a 58% share of insured new issue par sold.
$21 billion of U.S. public finance par we insured in 2020 was 30% more than in 2019 and included taxable and tax exempt transactions in both primary and secondary markets.
2020 PVP was up 45% year-over-year.
Many issuers took advantage of lower interest rates to refund existing issues in many cases using taxable bond for advanced refunding.
Correspondingly, taxable issues widened the investor base in non-traditional investors both domestically and internationally.
Many of these investors could particularly benefit from our guarantee because of our greater familiarity with the municipal bond structures and credit factors.
We insured $6.8 billion of forum taxable municipal new issues in 2020, up from $3 billion in 2019, $1.5 billion in 2018.
We also guaranteed $2.5 billion of par the new issues that had underlying ratings in the AA category from S&P or Moody's, which was $1 billion more than in 2019.
While investors had no reason to see default risk in such high quality credits many believe the risk, the rating downgrades had increased in all rating categories.
This gave investors an additional incentive to prefer our insured bonds over uninsured bonds.
There are Demonstratable cases where after [Indecipherable] bonds we had insured saw underlying downgraded or its credit viewed as distressed the insured bonds sell at market value better than the comparable uninsured bonds.
The increase in institutional demand for our guarantee was evident in 39 new issues, up from 22 in 2019 where we provided insurance in $100 million or more of par.
These include one of our largest U.S. public finance transactions in many years, $726 million of insured refunding bonds issued by Yankee Stadium, LLC.
Our production in Healthcare Finance made a strong contribution during 2020 as we guaranteed $2.7 billion of primary market par on 25 transactions.
As the only provider of bond insurance in the healthcare sector Assured Guaranty had 9.7% of all healthcare revenue bond par issued in 2020.
Additionally we guaranteed for $164 million of healthcare par across 39 different secondary market policies.
Another highlight was our reentry after seven years into the private higher education bond market where we insured a total of $690 million of par for Howard, Drexel and Seton Hall Universities.
For Howard University we insure two issues totaling $320 million in par in insured par.
Our International Public Finance business produced $82 million of PVP during 2020 even though a number of opportunities were delayed due to pandemic conditions.
However the pandemic also had the positive effects of widening credit spreads.
We executed significant transactions including three solar energy transaction in Spain, student accommodation financing for Kingston University in the United Kingdom.
We have developed a strong pipeline for 2020.
In our Worldwide Structured Finance business, we executed a diverse group of transactions in the asset-backed securities, insurance capital management and other structured finance sectors and generated $16 million of PVP during 2020.
Even though pandemic conditions constrained our marketing activities we were able to lay the groundwork for a variety of potential transactions in 2020.
The efficacy of our underwriting and risk management was evident in the overall performance of our insured portfolio.
This credit quality changed little even as necessary efforts to control the endemic disrupted the economy.
Our par exposure to credit review below investment declined by $531 million, a 6% decrease and ended the year at less than 3.5% of net par outstanding.
Our surveillance professionals reacted to the early news of the pandemic by properly identifying the insured portfolio sectors most likely to weaken evaluating the vulnerability of each of these sectors obligations, reaching out directly to issuers in many cases.
In general what we found was reassuring.
We have paid only relatively all first-time insurance claims we believe were due at least in par to credit stress rising specifically from COVID-19.
We currently project full reimbursement of these claims.
U.S. municipal bonds make up about three quarters of our insured portfolio, asset class they are well structured to protect bond holders with most of our transactions containing covenants that requires issuers to increase tax rates, fees and charges, make sure they are adequate funds to meet their service requirements.
And many also require remaining to debt service reserve funds with up two year's worth of debt service coverage.
Municipalities generally improved their financial condition in the decade since the Great Recession, which further prepared them to handle the market disruption caused by the pandemic.
Regarding Puerto Rico, we announced earlier this week that we have agreed to conditionally support their revise GO of public bidding authorities plan support agreement with the Oversight Board and other creditors of Puerto Rico in the PBA.
As we have said all along we support it consensually, negotiated and comprehensive approach to resolving Puerto Rico's current financial challenges.
We have conditionally supported this agreement with the express understanding that the affected parties will work with us in good faith to make this agreement part of a more comprehensive solution one that respects our legal rights and ultimately achieves the goal of bringing the Title 3 process to adjust an expeditious conclusion.
We will continue to work diligently and sharply toward the resolution of any remaining issues the GO and the PBA credits as well as other Puerto Rico credits such as salary and transportation bonds, prevention authority bonds and others.
This effort is taking place amid occurred during economic news, significant federal assistance has been unlocked, Commonwealth revenues continue to exceed the expectations underlying the Oversight Board's fiscal plans resulting in aggregate Commonwealth balances tripling over the last three years to more than $20 billion at year-end 2020 and reaching as high as almost $25 billion mid-year.
Our total net par exposure to Puerto Rico decreased in 2020 by $545 million including $372 million of water and sewer bonds that were redeemed without any claims having been made on our policy.
Turning to asset management, our corporate strategy for any new business -- for entering new business was to diversify our business profile by building a fee-based revenue source that complements our risk-based premium revenues utilizing our core competency of credit evaluation.
Assured Investment Management also gives us a in-house platform to generally improve investment returns -- to generate improved investment returns.
Our Asset Management subsidiary accomplished a number of strategic objectives.
AssuredIM issued two new CLOs, opened a European CLO warehouse during the year.
It also created a specialized investment advisor that launched new healthcare opportunity funds and continued its planned strategy of unwinding certain legacy funds.
AssuredIM sold CLO equity positions in those bonds to third parties.
Even though AssuredIM assets under management in the wind down funds were reduced by $2.4 billion its total AUM changed very little declining by less than 3% to $17.3 billion.
Assured Guaranty's insurance companies have allocated $1.1 billion of investments from AssuredIM to manage, of which, almost $600 million was funded as of year-end.
As of October 1, 2020, we were pleased to learn that Assured Guaranty would become a competitor of the Standard & Poor's Small Cap 600 Index.
We believe there are thousands of passive and active small cap mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, attractive benchmark to this Index and therefore are likely to hold our shares for the long term.
These investors' appetite for our shares was reflected in a 31% increase in our share price the week following the announcement.
Our share price continue to grow and in the year 44% higher than on October 1 almost doubling through February 25 of 2021.
Inclusion in the Index changed the composition of our shareholder base to be somewhat more heavily weighted toward the index focused asset managers including our second- and fourth-largest shareholders which together hold approximately 20% of our shares at year-end.
Times like these are no substitute for financial strength, experience and judgment.
These are qualities that enables Assured Guaranty to stand the test of time to more than three decades of market cycles and unexpected economic shocks.
They are attributes that enables us to help borrowers of public finance, infrastructure and structured finance markets as well as financial institutions, pension funds, insurance companies, retail investors to navigate the current economy.
We are optimistic about 2021.
On the whole U.S. municipal revenues have fared much better than the market originally feared from the pandemic.
They remain under stress.
But we believe few investment grade credits will default least of all those that we have selected to insure.
We are confident in the quality of our insured portfolio, our financial strength and our financial liquidity.
And many investors have a renewed appreciation of our value proposition.
As infrastructure spending increases in our markets to address deferred needs and provide economic stimulus we expect to continue to find opportunities to assist issuers managing their financing costs.
Longer term, we believe 2020 was a pivotal year that's likely to leave a lasting impression the great value our guarantee provides when something as unexpected and distressing as COVID-19 occurs.
We continue to work to create value through a thriving financial guarantee business and a growing asset management arm.
We will never lose sight of our role as stewards of capital where we are committed to managing efficiently protect policyholders, to reward our shareholders and our clients.
Let me start by highlighting this year's achievements against our long-term strategic initiatives.
In 2020 we had strong PVP results, particularly in the U.S. public finance sector which replenished enough deferred premium revenue to offset scheduled amortization and refundings.
We also retired 16.2 million shares, mainly through share repurchases which helped to boost adjusted book value per share to a new record of over $114 per share.
In our Asset Management business, we increased fee earning AUM from $8 billion to $12.9 billion or 62% across CLO opportunity and liquidity strategies.
As of yearend 2020 Assured Guaranty insurance companies had $1.1 billion of invested assets that is managed by Assured Investment Management of which $562 million is through an investment management agreement and $522 million is committed to Assured Investment Management funds, which had a total return of 15.6% on the invested balances.
Turning to our fourth quarter 2020 results, adjusted operating income was $56 million or $0.69 per share compared with $87 million or $0.90 per share in the fourth quarter of 2019.
The contribution from our insurance segment for fourth quarter 2020 was $109 million compared with $133 million in fourth quarter 2019.
While loss expense was higher in fourth quarter 2020 primarily related to our Puerto Rico exposures, our earned premiums and income from the investment portfolio both increased on a quarter-over-quarter basis.
Net earned premiums and credit derivative revenues increased $30 million to $159 million in fourth quarter 2020 compared with the $129 million in fourth quarter 2019.
These amounts include premium accelerations of $65 million and $39 million respectively.
Total income from the insurance segment investment portfolio consists of net investment income and equity earnings of investees totaling $94 million in fourth quarter 2020 and $84 million in fourth quarter of 2019.
Net investment income represents interest income when fixed maturity and short-term investment portfolio and with $70 million in fourth quarter 2020 compared with $85 million in the fourth quarter of 2019.
The decrease was primarily due to lower average balances in the externally managed fixed maturity investment portfolio due to dividends paid by the insurance subsidiaries and were used for AGL share repurchases and the shift of investments to Assured Investment Management funds and other alternative investments as well as lower short-term interest rates.
Equity in earnings of investees represents our investment in the Assured Investment Management funds as well as earnings from our strategic investments.
This component of investment earnings is more volatile and the net investment income on the fixed maturity portfolio and will fluctuate from period-to-period.
In the fourth quarter 2020 equity earnings was $24 million compared to a negligible amount in fourth quarter 2019.
As of December 31, 2020 the insurance subsidiaries investment in Assured Investment Management funds was $345 million, compared with only $77 million as of December 31, 2019.
The insurance companies have authorization to invest up to $750 million in Assured Investment Management funds of which over $43 million has been committed including $177 million that has yet to be funded.
In addition, the company has a commitment to invest an additional $125 million in unrelated alternative investments as of December 31, 2020.
As we shift assets into these alternative investments, average balances in the fixed maturity investment portfolio and the related net investment income may decline.
However, the long-term we expect the enhanced returns on the alternative investment portfolio to be approximately 10% to 12%, which exceeds the returns on the fixed maturities portfolio.
In the Asset Management segment adjusted operating income was a loss of $20 million compared with a loss of $10 million in fourth quarter 2019.
The additional net loss was mainly attributable to $5 million in placement fees associated with the launch of new healthcare strategy and an impairment of a right of lease -- right of use asset of $13 million related to the relocation of Assured Investment Management offices to 1633 Broadway, Assured Guaranty's primary New York City location.
Our long-term view of the Asset Management segment remains positive based on our recent success in increasing fee earning AUM by 62% and launching a $900 million healthcare strategy with significant third-party investment.
In addition, we believe the ongoing effect of the pandemic on market conditions may present attractive opportunities for Assured Investment Management and for alternative asset management industry as a whole.
Adjusted operating loss for the corporate division was $28 million in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared with $32 million in the fourth quarter of 2019.
The corporate division mainly consists of interest rate expense on U.S. holding company's debt.
It also includes Board of Directors and other corporate expenses in fourth quarter 2019 also included transaction expenses associated with the BlueMountain acquisition.
On a consolidated basis the effective tax rate may fluctuate from period-to-period based on the proportion of income in different tax jurisdictions.
In fourth quarter 2020 the effective tax rate was a provision of 12.7% compared with a benefit of 3.5% in fourth quarter 2019.
The benefit in fourth quarter 2019 was primarily due to the favorable impact of a new regulation related to base erosion in anti-abuse tax.
Moving on to the full-year results, adjusted operating income was $256 million in 2020 compared with $391 million in 2019.
The variance was mainly driven by the Insurance segment and Asset Management segment adjusted operating income, which declined $83 million and $40 million respectively on a year-over-year basis.
Please note asset Management full-year results are not comparable between 2020 and 2019 as 2020 includes a full year of operating results while 2019 includes only one quarter as the BlueMountain acquisition occurred on October 1, 2019.
The insurance segment had adjusted operating income of $429 million in 2020 compared with $512 million in 2019.
Full year insurance results were lower, primarily due to a large benefit in our RMBS exposures in 2019 that did not recur in 2020, partially offset by a commutation gain in 2020 on the reassumption of a previously ceded portfolio.
Net earned premiums and credit derivative revenues were $504 million in 2020 compared with $511 million in 2019 including premium accelerations of $130 million -- and a $130 million respectively.
Also, noteworthy is that public finance scheduled earned premiums increased 5% in 2020 compared with 2019.
The corporate division had adjusted operating loss of $111 million in both 2020 and 2019.
Turning to our capital management strategy, in the fourth quarter of 2020 we repurchased 4.3 million shares for $126 million at an average price of dollars and $28.87 per share.
This brings our full-year 2020 repurchases to 15.8 million shares or $446 million at an average price of $28.23.
So far in 2021 we have purchased an additional 1.4 million shares for $50 million.
Since January 2013, our successful repurchase program has returned $3.7 billion to shareholders, resulting in a 63% reduction in total shares outstanding.
The cumulative effect of these repurchases was a benefit of approximately $29.32 per share in adjusted operating shareholder's equity and $51.48 in adjusted book value per share, which helped drive these metrics to new record highs of $78.49 in adjusted operating shareholder's equity per share and $114.87 of adjusted book value per share.
From a liquidity standpoint, the holding company currently has cash and investments of approximately $204 million of which $133 million resides in AGL.
These funds are available for liquidity needs or for use in the pursuit of our strategic initiatives through to expand the asset management business or repurchase shares to manage our capital.

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q4 adjusted operating earnings per share $0.69.

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