Good day, welcome to the Experian Half-Year Results Presentation hosted by Brian Cassin. My name is Nigel. I'm your event coordinator. During the presentation, your lines will remain on listen only. If you require assistance at any time, please key star zero on your telephone and a coordinator will be happy to assist you. I would like now to hand the call over to Brian. Brian, please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our Half-Year Results Presentation. I hope you and your families have stayed safe and well during these times. As you can see from our results announced this morning, Experian has done well in the first half of FY 2021. We're now many months into the pandemic, and so far our business has been resilient. The biggest impact for us came in our Q1, which you will recall was negative 2%. We rebounded to growth in Q2, very substantial growth in some cases, and we're at the upper end of our expectations for Q2 and for the half. We'll go through the puts and takes in a few minutes, but we've already highlighted areas where we have seen exceptionally strong performances. Consumer services in North America deserve special mention, but there are plenty of others.
That said, progress is uneven, and we continue to see weakness in some parts of the business, which did moderate as we went through Q2, but we still have some negative numbers knocking about. With virus spikes and new lockdowns, you'll forgive us for saying that we can't be 100% precise about how the next few months will play out, so we are cautious about giving full-year guidance. As you can see from these results, we are incredibly well-positioned. Even in the midst of a pandemic, we've been able to grow organically. Our drive for innovation over the past few years and strategic decisions on where to position our business, in particular in consumer services, have and will continue to pay off.
We continue to look for new areas of growth and areas to streamline our business and improve performance going forward. We're even more excited about the opportunities we have ahead of us. Q2 organic revenue growth was 5%. That took us to organic revenue growth for the half of 2% after the 2% reduction in Q1. Total H1 growth was 3% when you include acquisitions. North America and Latin America delivered strong growth in context, up 7% and 5% for the half respectively. There's no doubt that we benefited from the spike in mortgage refi in the U.S. We have been working hard over the past few years to position ourselves better in this segment. We have benefited from that. As we all know, we have deliberately and methodically positioned ourselves strongly in consumer services. This is paying off hugely.
Globally, we are closing in on 100 million consumer memberships. This already makes us one of the largest direct-to-consumer platforms in the world. Something which will assume even more importance and relevance in a world where digitization is accelerating rapidly. Of course, not everywhere performed well. The U.K. and the EMEA/Asia Pacific faced more challenges. Some of that is down to less favorable mix in those regions, and some because the pandemic has hit economies in different ways. Trajectories generally improved in Q2, but we are still in negative territory. Cost management has been an area of focus for us. One of our key principles has been to make sure we make the right decisions for the long term, retaining our operational capacity, building our employer brand, and continuing to invest for growth. We think we've judged it right so far.
For example, we acted quickly on discretionary items, whereas we actually increased our marketing investment consumer services. This has obviously benefited the business, not just in the short term, but we believe for many years to come. We did take additional measures to rebalance our business in half one. The majority of this relates to the U.K., which as you all know, has been an underperforming region for us and is in the midst of a significant overhaul as part of our transformation program. Lloyd will discuss that in a bit more detail shortly. EBIT in the half did slightly better than we expected. At constant currency, it was up 1%. There was some margin impact, particularly as we navigated through the early stages of the crisis. The benchmark EPS was up 2% at constant currency, down modestly after the FX headwind.
Our commitment to our capital priorities and the dividend is unchanged. The first interim dividend of $0.145 per share is the same as it was this time last year. Now there are some clear trends emerging from this crisis. In the short term, we will continue to face macroeconomic pressures and lockdown uncertainty, which will act as a constraint. However, as we have demonstrated, countercyclical elements in the business and deliberate actions and strong strategic positions in areas like consumer services, health, and mortgage have meant that we've been able to continue growing our business during the pandemic. Our innovation pipeline is very strong. We are benefiting from new products introduced during previous years as well as specifically during the pandemic. In a little over six months, we've generated a significant pipeline of new COVID-related opportunities. Many of these are for fraud and collections.
They include things like new attributes and scores, recovery scores, downturn triggers, a new product called Ascend Loss Forecaster, recession-relevant bundles, and many other examples. You've probably heard this many times by now, but the pandemic has accelerated trends that we believe were already evident. Banks were already accelerating investment in digital platforms. They're now moving faster to take out costs and crucially to improve customer performance in an accelerated digital world. This means greater opportunities for solutions we provide, not just software solutions like Ascend, but smart and new uses of data combined with platforms to help them reduce cost and improve performance.
The shift to cloud-based solutions, already a strong trend before COVID, has accelerated significantly. We recognized this trend several years ago and started to cloud-enable our suite of decisioning products through the Experian One platform, including pre-configured solutions for organizations that prefer standard out-of-the-box applications and highly configurable solutions for clients with more sophisticated needs. One thing I would like to point out is that as we've been investing in cloud, we've also been developing our core PowerCurve suite of propositions. In effect, we've been dual-running our investment in decisioning over the last three to four years. It's not trivial exercise, but we are now at a point where we have real traction for cloud-based solutions amongst our core client set, and that puts us into a very good position as we look forward.
Online fraud is on the increase, and we have many ways to meet that need through CrossCore, Sure Profile, and a number of other market-leading capabilities. Consumers, as we all know, have shifted massively online just at the time when personal finances have become more stressed and the need for personalized services has intensified. We're incredibly well-positioned to satisfy these needs. In health, consumers want the same kind of digital experience they get in other industries, especially since their share of the bill continues to increase, and we see healthcare providers investing in better patient experiences. In the last few years, we've added hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue from products that not previously exist, and we shall continue to benefit from these trends going forward. Turning now to progress in the half. It's very clear we made substantial progress in North America.
B2B had a solid first half, up 4%. Our mortgage volumes have been strong, refinancing volumes in particular. As I said earlier, this is an area we identified for expansion pre-COVID, we have taken some market share, and that's put us into a good position during this cycle. We do expect there will be some reversal of this in Q4. Current banking volumes are still depressed, as can be seen on this chart. Lenders have cautiously increased the amount of credit being extended, their near-term focus is on credit quality, and they've built up record loss reserves. Understandably, they're cautious and cost-focused, but in good shape generally. Lending will recover from these lows at some point. We can't be precisely certain when. Ascend has done really well. It continues to build momentum. Total contract value is now almost $350 million globally.
Team in North America have done a great job, and it was a material contributor to growth in the half. Added to this now is the global rollout, which is really gathering momentum. The product roadmap is full. Ascend Marketing, Account Review, Data Services, and CECL Forecaster, these are all new modules, each of which attacks a different sizable market segment. Our addressable market is growing. I think in time, Ascend globally will probably be larger than our core North America CIS business in coming years. The Experian One pipeline is growing and bookings are up. Mid-tier clients in particular are in the market for decisioning software. Some are finding the need to augment their online digital decisioning capabilities. Sometimes we put this together with data as a package service.
This is a very powerful platform. It's further strengthening as we add to it a host of different capabilities. I think this is yet another example of how our competitive advantage is really the breadth and depth of our solution set and our unique capability to bring it all together. Put another way, no single competitor can match the combination of the advanced technology platforms, decisioning software and analytics, and vast data sources. As lenders and credit grantors retool and update their data and decisioning systems, we see more opportunities to play to this fundamental strength, the ability to provide, integrate, and deliver the various components to solve larger puzzles for our clients. Our verticals have been a source of resilience, and we have accelerated investments to capitalize on some clear market opportunities.
Health continues to deliver a solid revenue growth and robust sales, despite the fact that industry was hit hard by hospital and clinic shutdowns. We believe this is a good indication that the products and services we offer are critical to the healthcare market. The pandemic has accelerated several trends, such as the demand for digital healthcare and transition to alternative care settings like telehealth. This is helping drive growth in several of our product lines. These trends, we believe, are here to stay. We're very pleased with the performance of both our core revenue cycle management business, our recent acquisition of MyHealthDirect, as well as our recent investments in consumer digital tools, collections, estimates, and identity.
It's also a business that relies heavily on the rest of Experian, consumes enormous amount quantity of Experian bureau data and marketing data to enhance workflow and analytics that we provide to clients. New business performance has been strong. 27% of sales in H1 were from new customer logos. This is significant because typically, most of the growth comes from selling additional capabilities, so it bodes really well for the future. We highlight automotive here, which actually was initially hit quite hard when the pandemic started, and since then it's bucked the trend of a challenging environment as car sales recovered, and new initiatives and new products helped our growth strategy there. Our performance in consumer services has been outstanding. You only have to look at the reported performance elsewhere to see that we are outperforming the market pretty much in every category.
In North America, growth of 13%, it's really good results. We've achieved this as others in the industry have had to reduce headcounts and pull back on marketing spend. By contrast, our brand awareness has grown, as shown here. Half of the U.S. population is now aware of Boost. We continue to enhance the proposition. Consumers can now add payments they make to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. Again, this is important because when consumers are under financial stress, they want to better understand their financial position. There is still also demand for credit. We've delivered record numbers of credit approvals on CreditMatch. We continue to invest to enhance our propositions and enter new markets like insurance, which was already a material contributor in H1 and looks set to be another huge opportunity for us in the U.S.
Taking a step back from performance to short term, we now address nearly 100 million consumers globally, that gives us a tremendous opportunity to continue the strategic progress and growth of this business. That said, we still have a long way to go if you compare it to the 1.3 billion consumers that we have on file. I'd like to remind you that we see this not only as a growth business, but for a business whose largest asset is data on over a billion consumers worldwide, a key plank in fulfilling our obligations as a company to society more broadly. Turning to Latin America, we had a very good performance for the half as a whole, up 5% organically. Brazil has coped remarkably well, all things considered. Q2 was outstanding, up double digits. Positive Data is making progress.
We already have 15 Positive Data products in market and plan to launch another 29 across the rest of 2020. Still early days, but we've already implemented scores, attributes, and we've had very positive client feedback. Growth drivers are not limited to Positive Data, though. We've had successes for Ascend and one of the largest contracts signed outside the U.S. to date, and we push forward with Experian One use cases as well as CrossCore. This combination of factors is hard for others to replicate. Data is superior. We have unmatched product capability, and we can combine and integrate these to create unique and hard-to-replicate solutions that deliver incredible value. Add to this is the direct relationships we now have with one-third of the Brazilian adult population, and you can see we have a very exciting future for our business there.
No other company focused on financial services in Brazil has anywhere near this number. We now have 51.8 million consumers connected to the platform. 88% of all consumers in Brazil say they are aware of the Serasa brand. Memberships are translating into commercial success. Revenue's more than doubled in half with big success for Limpa Nome. We also expect that Serasa will fast become one of the go-to places to get credit in Brazil. Score Turbo, which we recently launched, will facilitate this. Score Turbo is related to Experian Boost. It works by enabling consumers to pay their bills using our platform, which can help to instantly improve scores and get instant access to new sources of credit.
This matters because not only does it build our brand further, but we also collect data every time we interact with a consumer, so we enrich services for consumers while also extending our lead in data itself. CreditMatch is fast becoming a revenue driver, and we expect to further develop the business. Brazil is already one of the most digitized societies in the world, but it is also under-penetrated for credit. Incomes are low and the banking system is highly concentrated. This is an attractive combination of drivers notwithstanding the current macroeconomic environment. It was a tough half here in the U.K., down 12%. We don't have the same extent of counter-cyclical revenues in the U.K., no health vertical, for example, and the mortgage market is structurally different. That said, we've made good progress on our business transformation. We've discussed this before.
The issues in our U.K. business arise from the complexity of the technology estate built up over many years. The cornerstone of our transformation is about simplifying the estate, modernizing it, removing it as an issue, then getting back to profitable growth. The goal is to have a much simpler, stronger core, which will be better positioned to take advantage of the large and numerous opportunities we see ahead of us. What have we done? In the last 12 months, we've completely reorganized how the business is structured. We've massively improved service levels. We've reduced our cost base substantially. Pandemic aside, we had expected to see that improve our performance this year. That didn't happen. The underlying improvements are there. That will set us up for significant progress as we go into FY 2022.
Alongside all this, we've not let up on innovation, and we've moved ahead with key investments. We secured new wins for Experian Ascend, including with a tier one lender, and we have considerable traction with affordability and vulnerability solutions, which are well-suited to the current climate. Perhaps most noteworthy of all, we have launched Experian Boost, a first for the U.K. market and which comes at a time when consumer finances are under a lot of pressure. In summary, we've done a lot of heavy lifting, and we are on an underlying improving trajectory in this part of the business. EMEA/Asia Pacific declined 18% as COVID-19 shutdowns materially affected bureau volumes and caused delays of software implementations. This region has a much higher proportion of decision analytics software, and this has been harder hit. There is a lot of volatility in the outlook.
Many countries in this region are in some form of renewed lockdown, so it could be longer before we see material improvements. We are getting more focused on some key markets where we can see a path to scale, and some markets, despite the challenges, have great momentum right now. I'm very pleased to say that the acquisition in Germany has gone really well, even better than we'd hoped. Volumes are strong. We've had some great wins in the market. We've already launched products like Ascend into the German market. I want to just quickly give you a brief update on ESG. This is central to how we manage the business, and you can see our three core pillars here. My earlier comments on consumer services show how transforming financial lives is actually integral to what we do as a company.
It's not just something which we do on the side. Since 2013, we've helped 35 million people with our social innovation products, and we aim to increase this reach to over 100 million people by 2025. We've used our data and analytics to help governments help the most vulnerable during the pandemic. We've launched United for Financial Health, aiming to help 15 million people and small businesses most affected by the crisis. More widely, women now make up 40% of our board. It's important to note that we meet the recommendations of both the Hampton-Alexander and Parker Review on gender and ethnic board diversity. We're pleased to have been recertified as a great place to work for the third year in a row. Last year, we cut our carbon intensity by 14%. We're now committed to be carbon neutral in our own operations by 2030.
There's always going to be an element of work in progress with this, but I think we're very proud of the positive steps we've taken, not just this year, but in the years that led up to it. With that, I will hand it over to Lloyd to take you through the financial update.
Okay. Thanks, Brian, and good morning, everyone. I hope you and your families are all safe and well. Starting with the highlights, as you've heard from Brian, against the unprecedented backdrop of the pandemic, we've performed well in the half. After a 2% organic decline in Q1, we returned to growth in Q2 at the top end of our updated guidance, with organic revenue growth of 5%. Overall, in half one, we delivered organic revenue growth of 2%. Total revenue growth at constant exchange rates was 3%, benefiting mainly from the German Bureau acquisition. Exchange rates were 3% revenue headwind in the half, mainly due to weakness in the Brazilian real. As a result, total revenue at actual exchange rates was in line with the prior year. Constant currency growth in benchmark EBIT was 1%.
Benchmark EPS grew 2% in half at constant rates, but declined 2% after the FX drag. We delivered a very strong operating cash flow conversion in the traditionally weaker first half at 89% conversion. The board approved a first interim dividend at $0.145, unchanged on last year. We ended the first half in the lower half of our operating leverage range with our financing further strengthened. Touching briefly on our organic revenue trends, after a strong finish to FY 2020, we saw the impact of the pandemic during Q1 with a 2% decline in organic growth. We rebounded strongly in Q2, achieving the 5% organic growth we outlined with 2% for the half. Revenue across all regions improved between Q1 and Q2, but there were a few standout drivers which helped deliver the return to growth.
U.S. Mortgage strengthened further, adding 3% to Q2 organic revenue growth, up from 2% in Q1. Consumer Services revenue grew 17% globally in the second quarter, improving from 8% in the first, with Latin America Consumer Services delivering triple-digit growth. We continue to see strong demand for Ascend as we scale the product globally, and these contracts are now delivering material revenue, contributing 1% to growth at the group level. In addition, the contribution from Positive Data in Brazil is growing as we launch more products to the market, and we also saw an improvement in underlying credit market trends. Whilst these are still not back to pre-COVID levels, they were better in many locations in Q2 over Q1. These factors helped drive the recovery in organic growth from -2% in Q1 to the +5% in Q2, despite the continuing uncertainty in a number of our end markets.
Looking a little deeper at two of our largest businesses in North America, the chart on the left shows the relative contributions to organic growth in our Consumer Information Bureau, split between mortgage in the light blue and the rest of the bureau in dark blue, with a combined performance shown at the top of the bars. Mortgage has performed very strongly over the last three quarters since the Fed rate cut in Q4 of the prior financial year, adding 3% to group growth in Q2. We've taken current volumes in mortgage into our guidance range for Q3 organic revenue growth. Looking further ahead, forecasting is very uncertain. If, for example, you take the MBA, Mortgage Bankers Association forecast for mortgage volumes for Q4, the 3% contribution to group growth we've seen during Q2 would slow to between a zero and 1% contribution in the fourth quarter.
Outside of mortgage, you can see the improved growth in the rest of the bureau from Q1 to Q2. This has been driven by a strong contribution from Ascend, whilst in other areas, volumes remain subdued, as you saw in Brian's presentation. On the right-hand chart, you can see the trends in our Consumer Services business. Our subscription products in light pink have contributed very strongly in the last two quarters, particularly as consumers look to better understand their financial position during this time. Despite the very challenging market backdrop, lead generation has continued to grow well, more than offsetting variability in our partner solutions growth. Compared to some of the sharp drops from some of our lead generation competitors, this represents a great performance from our team as we've continued to take market share.
This highlights the strength of our brand and the innovation we're driving through our diverse portfolio of direct-to-consumer products. It's worth noting that the 16% growth we saw in Q2 came on top of a very strong prior year performance. These next two slides show the breakdown of performance from our businesses within each of our regions. In line with our discussions earlier in the year, we wanted to provide this additional disclosure given the unprecedented trading environment this year. Our North America business performed very well with organic growth increasing from 4% in Q1 to 9% in Q2. Our core bureaus were very resilient with organic revenue growth improving from 4% in Q1 to 14% in Q2. This was driven by the continued strength in mortgage profiles, Ascend, and an improvement in core credit profile volumes. Automotive bounced back to growth in Q2, driven by healthier volumes.
Our health business has strengthened over the first half with 4% revenue growth in Q2. This has been driven by better performance in collections and patient access as hospitals have adjusted to the current situation, increased capacity, and started elective surgeries again. Our consumer services business strengthened over the half, with revenue growth increasing from 10% to 16%, driven predominantly by subscriptions, I mentioned earlier. Latin America declined by 1% in Q1 but achieved 10% growth in Q2 to deliver 5% growth for the half. Bureau revenues improved from a 5% decline in Q1 to 1% growth in Q2, driven by an improving trend in our bureau volumes, Positive Data, and growing revenue from Ascend. The consumer business has continued to be very strong with revenue more than doubling in Q1 and nearly tripling in Q2.
It's benefited from an excellent performance in Brazil from Limpa Nome, our debt resolution tool. Overall, across North and Latin America businesses, which account for almost 80% of our group revenue, organic revenue was up 6% for the first half. Our U.K. and Ireland business improved over the half from 15% down in Q1 to 8% down in Q2. We saw the supply of credit improve over the second quarter, leading to higher transaction volumes and driving better performances in our bureaus. Decision Analytics saw some improvements from the lows of Q1, improving from -16% in Q1 to -8% in Q2. This was helped by some improvements in new business environment and higher volumes in our fraud and identity business. Consumer Services moved from -18% in Q1 to -11% in Q2, with the improvement coming from growth in subscription revenue which is proving itself to be counter-cyclical.
The paid member base grew sequentially through the second quarter, and we expect this trend to continue. This has offset weakness in lead generation where we see healthy consumer demand to borrow but where supply has not yet fully recovered. Our EMEA/Asia Pacific business improved from Q1 to Q2, driven by a better performance in EMEA, which saw an improving trajectory in bureau volumes. Spain is recovering quite slowly, but Denmark, Norway, Italy, and Netherlands are now close to prior year levels. Volumes in Germany are actually outperforming last year on a pro forma basis due to the strong position in e-commerce. Our Asia Pacific business weakened due mainly to delays in software implementations. Turning now to managing our cost base. As we outlined earlier in the year, we've been managing our cost base very closely and deliberately in the first half.
We took the decision to continue to invest behind our growth programs and through the depth of pandemic during Q1 to maintain our capacity across our businesses, despite the very different performances in different regions. For this year, we'll continue to explain the main movements in our overall cost base by category. Starting with volume variable costs of 15% of our cost base in this category increased as expected, broadly in line with revenue. 15% of our costs are discretionary, and about 80% of this is marketing. Given the strength of our U.S. and Brazilian consumer businesses, we've continued to increase levels of investment in marketing as we continue to gain market share in the direct-to-consumer segments. This rise in marketing spend was more than offset by significant reductions in travel and other discretionary costs.
45% of our cost base is labor. Here we saw a slight increase in headcount due to acquisitions and the annualization of prior year merit increases. We controlled organic headcount strongly. Overall, we ended the half with headcount broadly where we ended last year, including the impact of acquisitions. Lastly, 25% of our costs are fixed in the near term, mainly depreciation, technology infrastructure, facilities, and data costs. These costs have increased due to higher depreciation reflecting increasing technology investment in prior years. We've also seen an increase in dual running costs related to our technology transformation as more of our products and services move to cloud provision without a reduction in our fixed infrastructure costs. You can see the near-term approaches resulted in tight cost control while continuing to sustain innovation and technology investment spend.
The net effect is that our organic costs were up 2% in the first half in line with the guidance range we gave. For the second half, we expect a broadly similar level of organic cost growth of 2%-3%. Some benefits of cost actions in regions most impacted by external trends is more than offset by increased investment in consumer marketing and the continuing trend of technology dual running costs. As the longer-term impacts of the crisis become clearer, we'll clearly keep all our options under review. Turning to the EBIT margin and looking on a geographic basis, starting from our reported prior year margin of 26.9%, North America grew EBIT by 12%, contributing 100 basis points to group margin. We saw strong operating leverage in B2B, and also an improved consumer services margin, even as we increased marketing expenditure.
Margins in Latin America dipped slightly with a 30 basis points drag on group margin due to adverse mix effects as the consumer business, which is still in its investment stage, grew exceptionally quickly. We invested behind Positive Data launch. The U.K. margin reflected the impact of the pandemic on revenue, impacting group margin by 130 basis points. The margins in EMEA and Asia Pacific reflected revenue weakness in the region, which more than offset the benefits from the addition of the German bureau acquisition. Within other, we saw a positive impact of 100 basis points, reflecting strong central discretionary cost control and positive mix effects in the half. Turning now to EPS. Starting from the first half of FY 2020, in which benchmark EPS was $0.491 a share. Growth in benchmark EBIT from continuing operations was 1%, reflecting the organic revenue growth performance.
Interest expense decreased to $60 million as a result of lower average global interest rates. The tax rate is flat at 26.2%. We saw higher weighted average numbers of shares at 907 million in the half. EPS was therefore up 2% on a constant FX basis and down 2% at actual FX rates, reflecting the weaker Brazilian real. Now taking a look at our usual reconciliation to statutory results. Amortization of acquisition intangibles increased to $65 million, consistent with the increased acquisition activities last year. Acquisition related items remained flat at $14 million. Exceptional items reflect restructuring costs, which we recorded in the half. At the end of last year, we talked about our planned transformation program in the U.K. business, which we were initiating to improve the performance of the business.
As our most complex technology and application estate, we've been establishing a roadmap to simplify our technology estate, enhance customer experience, and return the business to profitable growth. In the first half, we started to implement our plans with a new organizational structure focused on delivering enhanced outcomes for our clients, alongside a multistage technology transformation program. In addition, following a number of acquisitions and growth initiatives to bring scale to some of our smaller markets, we also initiated a number of restructuring actions to gain greater operational efficiency and focus our activity on a smaller number of scaling end markets in EMEA and Asia Pacific. These changes are all focused on improving the operating performances of the business and have strong near-term paybacks. In half one, we recorded $22 million of exceptional restructuring costs, and we expect the total for the full year cash costs to be $50 million.
With strong line of sight on the benefits of the changes we're making, I expect them to deliver $40 million of year-over-year annual cash cost savings from FY 2022. Finally, on this slide, non-cash financing remeasurements decreased from $51 million to $29 million, which include FX losses on the Brazilian real intergroup funding. Turning now to cash flow. We saw very strong cash flow generation with 89% conversion in half one, which is the historically weaker half for cash flow. This includes some catch up from the end of last year, when we saw the impact on cash of the emerging pandemic at the end of our financial year, and also the mix of very strong growth in consumer services, which has a shorter cash cycle. Benchmark operating cash flow therefore increased 69% in the half at actual rates.
There was a reduction in capital expenditure with a disciplined approach to infrastructure spend and maintaining the prioritization of product development. Net capital expenditure represented 8% of half one revenue, broadly in line with the 9% we saw in FY 2020. Lastly, depreciation amortization has increased, driven by investment in the previous years. Looking at the balance sheet. As you know, our target net debt to EBITDA range is 2x-2.5 x, and we finished half one at 2.2 x, just in the lower half of the range. We continue to hold strong investment-grade ratings, and these have been stable since 2011. Looking at our funding, we issued a new GBP 400 million sterling bond in October to take advantage of the current low interest rates. This bond provides funding for the bond maturing in October next year.
After that, we do not have any bonds to refinance until September 2024, and we spread our maturities to ensure we do not have large refinancing requirements in any one period. Reflecting on our capital priorities and given the resilience of the business this year, our strong financial position, and our confidence in our business model, the board's recommended a first interim dividend of $0.145 per share, unchanged on last year. Just turning now to our near-term expectations. There is clearly still a high degree of uncertainty as we look ahead, particularly around the potential for further lockdowns and the variability in economic activity. We therefore will not give full year guidance, but will provide some elements of ranges in our revenue and cost expectations.
Our current view is that organic revenue for Q3 will be in the range of +3% to +5%, with a further 2% from acquisitions, all at constant currency. The outlook in this range will depend on the continued strength in mortgage volumes in the U.S. and the progress of our North American and LatAm consumer business. We're also watching closely the impact of renewed lockdowns on credit volumes across our key geographies. On costs, we continue to finely balance tight cost control with investment in the business to position ourselves for recovery. For the second half, we expect a broadly similar level of organic cost growth of 2%-3%. Some benefits of cost actions in regions most impacted by external trends is more than offset by increased investment in consumer marketing and the continuing trend of technology dual running costs.
As the longer-term impacts of the crisis become clearer, we'll clearly keep our options under review. Lastly, turning now to FY 2021 modeling considerations. We expect acquisitions to add around 2% organic revenue growth for the year. We expect FX will be between a 4%-5% headwind to EBIT growth in FY 2021, assuming current rates continue. We expect net interest to be around $120 million, reflecting the lower market interest rates. The benchmark tax rate is expected to be around 26%-27%, reflecting the mix of profits. Due to the ownership structure of the German Bureau, we expect full-year minority interest to be around $ 5 million-$6 million. Finally, taking into account the shares we issued for the consideration of the German Bureau, the weighted average number of shares is expected to be in the region of 910 million for the year as a whole.
With that, I'll hand you back to Brian.
Great. Thanks, Lloyd. Just to wrap up, I think this has been a pretty extraordinary half year for everybody, Experian has come through it very well, delivering growth and a very strong cash flow performance. We think our business will emerge from this crisis very strongly, and we also think we're just really at the start of some exciting new growth stories that you can see from the results today. More broadly, the secular trends for a business like ours we think have become more pronounced. The investments that we've made before the crisis, and indeed continued during the crisis, mean we're very well positioned to take advantage of these. While we can't say for sure precisely what the next six months will bring, we're very enthusiastic about where we're positioned, and we're very enthusiastic about the opportunities for our business ahead.
Now I'm going to hand back to the operator for your questions, for which we will also be joined by our Chief Operating Officer, Kerry Williams. Operator, back to you.
Thank you, Brian. If you do have a question, please key star then one on your telephone keypad. If you then wish to withdraw the question or the question has already been asked, you can simply key star two. It is just star, then one to ask your question now. Okay, we do have some questions that have already come in. The first one is from Paul Sullivan from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, everybody. Couple on consumer and then one on margin from me. Firstly, can you clarify the lead gen contribution to growth in the U.S. and your thoughts on mortgage contribution to consumer, in the second quarter and the sustainability into the 2nd half? Don't take this the wrong way, but can you talk about engagement versus memberships? If half of America is aware of Boost, why have only five million people signed up? On margin, how do we think about the evolution from here going into next year with those cost savings kicking in? Is there any reason, perhaps linked to mortgage, why the U.S. margin would reverse if the U.K. recovers? Is 20%-30% still a sensible margin target for the U.K. over the medium term? Thank you.
Sure. Hi, Paul. Thanks for those questions. I'll let Lloyd chip in in a second. First point about consumer services is, the lead gen business is still growing, actually growing strongly. That growth has been impacted by the market environment, but I think the fact that we're able to grow just shows the strength of proposition that we have. That's the first question. The second bit was about engagement and sustainability. Engagement is really, really important because it's all very well to have millions of consumers as members of your platform, but if they're not engaging with the platform, the value of those consumer relationships is significantly lower. What's been consistently happening in all of our businesses, U.S., U.K., and Brazil, is that engagement levels have been increasing dramatically. That means that gives us a broader license to continue to innovate and offer propositions on the platform.
We mentioned insurance in North America is a good example of that. We launched that product at the start of the year, growing really strongly. We see that as another very exciting and huge opportunity for us to play in, where we have every right to play and are already demonstrating success. We won't take your question the wrong way, Paul, five million people signing up to give you access to their bank accounts is not trivial. The product, it might seem like we've been talking about it for a while. Actually, it's a little over a year and a half since we introduced it, and we continue to see great engagement from that. I think as we continue to evolve the proposition, we expect to see connections continue to escalate.
There's still a little bit of friction in the consumer experience. It takes a little bit longer for people to sign up than we would like. We've got a few things to fix that. I think we're very happy with that. I think at the outset, we'd absolutely taken that. I think it's broader than that. I think that the proposition itself has completely changed the brand perception of Experian in the market. It's given us a completely differentiated thing to talk about, and it's elevated our brand proposition. The broader benefit of something like Experian Boost goes beyond the actual number of connections and to the sort of halo that it gives around us as a company, and license to engage with a very broad population.
Even though we have five million consumers connected, the traffic that it drives to the site is very, very significant. Overall, I think we're very happy with that. I'll hand over to Lloyd to talk about the balance of the question in terms of the split growth and, I think on the margin in U.K.
Yeah, I think just on the balance of Consumer for, I think it's important to think about it all together. On Boost, we ended last year with three million connections. We're now at five. You can see really good progress in the first half of this year, particularly given what's been happening in the world. That, combined with the membership base we have, has meant that we've been able to continue to grow lead generation at a time when our competitors are seeing that really fall off a cliff. The lead generation overall in the second quarter was still growing between 30% and 40%, including the introduction that we had in the auto insurance marketplace during that time as well.
You stand back and you look at the performance of the Consumer business, how each of the propositions are feeding off each other, and compare it to the performance of the competitors. We feel we really see the benefit of the investments we've made there. On margin, two bits to your question, I think. Clearly, mortgage comes at a pretty high margin. Next year we'll have to find a way to lap that in North America. Equally, you're seeing the investments that we're making in the U.K. to launch Boost and to get the operating performance there improved similarly in the Asia Pacific, and also the investments that we've been making in consumer and Positive Data in Brazil. Overall, that plus the restructuring cost benefits give us, I think, plenty of options with margin either for operating performance or for further investment next year.
Thank you. That is very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question then is from Sylvia Barker from JPM. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe just going back to the margin point, just could you give us some detail around the North American margin within Consumer Services, which you said has done really well, and we can see the overall Consumer Services, EBIT and margins are up quite strongly in the first half. On the B2B side, if there's anything else that you can say around the profit contribution for mortgages will be quite helpful. Secondly, on the U.K., will you see any benefits from the measures you're taking in the second half of this year already, or should we only think about that as a boost into next year?
Maybe if you can just talk about a little bit the second half margins this year, given we're obviously seeing some improvements in the underlying growth, but perhaps the savings are not kicking in quite yet. If we think about your mortgages comments and the guidance, it seems that essentially your organic was quite consistent overall during the quarter at the group level. If you could maybe comment on that, and then mortgages seems to be still running at a decent pace. All your kind of slowdown comments are more relevant to Q4. If we can just check that. Thank you.
Okay. Maybe I'll start with the mortgage question. In the second quarter, mortgage contributed, as I mentioned, 3% to group growth. It was up a bit over 60% in the quarter. That's how you get to that 3% contribution. As you look out this quarter, clearly there are a range of outcomes. We might see it reduce a little from that 3% more to something like 2%, but there's clearly a range. The comments I made were mostly around the fourth quarter when we start to lap a tougher comp somewhere. The external forecasters are suggesting that mortgage might be a little less strong. Again, clearly a range of outcomes there. On margin. About 2/3, I would say, of the margin progress that we made in North America, it comes from the very strong position we've had in mortgage.
That clearly comes at a higher than average margin. We'll see that next year. There's a range of other movements across the North America business where we've been investing. If you recall, this time last year, we had the additional marketing spend for the Boost launch in North America, and we've actually overspent or spent over that elevated level this year, given the positive trends that we've had in that business. For the U.K., the majority of the benefits of the restructuring program in the U.K. and the Asia Pacific will flow next year. There's a little bit in the second half, but the majority is next year. I think second half margin. Clearly, the elevated revenue drops we had in the first quarter really weighed on first half margin.
You'd expect an operating margin that's more approaching the prior year in the second half, so an improved position for the full year as a whole as opposed to the first half. That's in line with that 2%-3% cost guidance that we've given. Hopefully that's clear, Sylvia.
That was very helpful. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. The next question then is from Brett Huff from Stephens Inc. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Congrats on a nice quarter.
Thanks, Brett.
Two questions from me. I did some quick math on the Brazil consumer, because I think this is maybe the first time you've explicitly broken it out. You said 1% of group revenue. If we just assume sort of a $5 billion kind of full year, that gets you something like $ 50 million. The North American consumer business is about $1 billion, give or take. As we think about Brazil and it getting bigger, how should we compare that to that North American $1 billion over time?
Brett, clearly, we're really excited about the potential of the Brazilian consumer business. Just at the point when Positive Data is becoming available in that market to have our brand and the IP in our consumer products to be able to bring to that market, we're pretty excited. We sized the opportunity about a year ago by saying we thought we could develop a consumer business of several hundreds of millions of dollars. Clearly, we're well on our way to maybe to the first hundred millions. FX has been a bit of a drag for us against that. You can see the progress we're making. That's the sort of sizing we put on it.
Okay. Second question is, as we're thinking about the marketing spend, I've seen a lot more of your Boost ads on TV, so I'm definitely receiving the message, so it's working. When you think about the LTV to customer acquisition cost or other metrics like that, how much more gas can you put on that fire and still have a compelling LTV to CAC range? How do you guys think about that?
We monitor that really closely. The complexity in it, Brett, that we're learning as we develop the diversification in our business is the extent to which we get cross-sell from one customer acquisition channel into other products with a lifetime value in. That's the area that we've been, I think, super surprised over the last year to 18 months as we've seen that Boost membership and that Boost traffic come in, the ability to convert that into other products, into lead generation on credit, on auto insurance, on identity. You have to think about the holistic lifetime value across the whole diversity of products. We watch that really closely.
Brett, one other thing I would add to what Lloyd said is the marketing spend is very deliberate. It does give you an immediate return, as you can see, actually in the results. I think what's more significant is some of the brand metrics that we put up in the presentation, because we know that continuing to invest in this isn't just a one-year payoff. This will pay off for many years to come because you just sort of embed in the minds of the consumer, the brand name and the propositions, and that gives you a very significant long-term benefit. I think we see this as both tactical as well as very strategic. I think we're pretty happy with some of the metrics that we put up on the presentation earlier.
Great. That's what I needed. Thank you.
Thanks, Brett.
Thank you. The next question then is from Rajesh Kumar from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. First is, when you think about Boost and your consumer business in the medium term, obviously you have transformed the business. There is a lot of great growth opportunity. We have seen some incremental noise around data regulations. Could you share your thinking on the subject in terms of how you are going to strategically position yourselves in North America, U.K., and Brazil? The second one is on the restructuring expense. Can you run us through how much of the expenses will be cash expense this year, and how much of it is basically a provision which can be used up next?
Thanks, Rajesh. I'll deal with the first one of those. On the consumer services business, I think you have to think back really to the original incarnation of what we set out to do strategically here. We set out to use our position as a credit bureau to develop propositions which demonstrated the value that we bring to consumers more broadly. On the regulatory point of view, this is exactly in line with where regulators all over the world want to see a business like ours going, which is, first of all, it's consumer consented.
Because every consumer that we have as a member has signed up to be a member and has agreed to the use of data in accordance with the terms we set out. Not only that, they're actually, and we know this from the interaction, they're really happy to see that their data is being used to enable them to get better outcomes. That's the key point. I think this is completely compliant from the direction of travel of where we see regulation going. It puts control back into the hands of consumers. It gives them more information, more ability to influence outcomes for them, and I think the reaction we get from consumers is very strong.
I think that in terms of the future of the business, I think we're very excited about it because not only have we proven the ability to grow business in the verticals that we've dealt so far, we've given us a broad license to continue to innovate in different parts of consumers' lives. I think as we move forward, you'll see us branch out into other areas of significant spend.
On the restructuring, Rajesh, the $50 million will be mostly cash this year. The vast majority is cash expense, and it's cash this year. Just to outline, these are changes that aren't really COVID-19 related. They're focused on areas of the business that we targeted for improvement before we saw the pandemic. Improving the U.K. business, as we outlined pretty heavily last year, and also improving the focus in the EMEA/Asia Pacific region. That combined is where we're targeting this, and it's cash cost.
Thank you. The next question then is from George Gregory from Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. I had three questions, please. Firstly, just following up on the earlier questions on consumer. Just keen to understand how we should think about the phasing next year as we comp against the very strong growth in both North America and Latin American consumer. Any sort of rough sense of how much of that in each business should or might drop away due to the sort of mortgage dynamic in North America and debt reconciliation in Brazil? Secondly, I wondered if you could elaborate on what exactly you're doing to your technology estate in the U.K. a bit. Finally, on a related topic, thanks for your ESG comments. I just wondered to what extent you'd consider accelerating the migration of your data estate to the cloud in order to benefit from the energy efficient architectures of some of the cloud vendors. Thanks.
I think, Lloyd, would you take the question on consumer, and then we'll hand it over to Kerry to address the technology question in the U.K. and the broader cloud point.
I think obviously next year is quite a way away, and there's quite a lot of variability in markets. Clearly where we've seen strength this year, we'll need to lap that. I think the Brazil opportunity is large. Whilst we might see the percentage growth rate reduce nominally, we would hope to continue to progress that business with a similar contribution. We're pretty excited about the opportunities for diversification in the North America consumer market. Lots of exciting ideas. I think we'll probably give you a bit more, George, in May. We have a lot of ambition for our consumer business given the investments and the strategic muscle we've been putting behind that. On technology in the U.K., I wonder if maybe Kerry wanted to come in for that.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. On the technology estate in the U.K., you break it down into two pieces. On the consumer side, we're well progressed on our technology transformation. We've already brought in and are live on our what we internally call our Corvette platform, which was created in the U.S., and so we were able to bring that over to the U.K. You've seen innovation starting to now come off of that new technology capability in the form of launching Boost in the U.K. market. We're well progressed on new technology in the consumer business in the U.K. We're now turning our attention to the B2B estate in the U.K., which is arguably significantly more complex and a larger technology estate than the consumer business was. We're starting down that journey.
This is in the early days from a technology perspective in the U.K. In terms of the question around migrating data to the cloud we have been doing that for some time now. We've been leveraging the cloud capabilities, particularly in our consumer businesses, for several years. Then our customers on the B2B side. There are still some customers that would prefer not to have their data in the cloud. What we've done with our technology vision and roadmap going forward is we have the ability to either host data in the cloud or host it within our facilities or at a third-party location or even on-prem at the customer site. We're very flexible about where we store the data in the cloud or elsewhere.
Each one of those decisions as we bring up a new technology platform is made based on the needs of the customers, the operating efficiency, and the flexibility in the platform that we want to get to. It's an opportunity for us, for sure, to continue that migration. There's also some desire from some customers to not have data in the cloud, and we manage that on a geography and customer basis. I'll stop there.
Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from Andy Grobler from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Just a couple from me, if I may. Firstly well, actually, both really on Latin America. From a margin perspective, as that consumer business in Latin America really grows up to hundreds of millions, hopefully. What level of margin should we expect? Is it going to be similar to the broader B2C group margin or above that within Brazil? Secondly, you talked about product launches from Positive Data into Brazil. Can you just talk a bit more about which products have been launched and what momentum you expect into the second half and, I guess, over the next 18 months as those products begin to get that momentum? Thank you very much.
Hi, Andy. Just on the clarification on the product launches. I think we said the product launches related to COVID-19 were broad across the portfolio, really, not specifically Brazil, although we do have products in Brazil like anywhere else. I'm going to ask Kerry really to talk a little bit about that. And then ask Lloyd to address the Latin margin expansion question. Kerry, do you want to address the product one first?
Yeah. Sure. Andy, as you would imagine, we started with the path of least resistance and the greatest demand in the marketplace, and that would be around scores and reports. Scores around Positive Data were the first products into the market. That's part of the 15 products that were referenced in Brian's overview of the business. We continue to look at other areas. We're moving into the triggers world, which has had great success in other areas with Positive Data. We've launched Ascend, as Brian referenced, in the Brazil market, and Ascend now with Positive Data becomes highly desirable in the Brazil market as opposed to just in a negative data environment. Really the initial roadmaps for us have been around scores and reports, attributes in the marketplace.
We're moving towards triggers and obviously Ascend, and then all of the capabilities that we do with Ascend, whether it's the analytics, marketing capabilities, or other capabilities that we hang off of the Ascend platform. That's the immediate focus.
Kerry, could I ask, in terms of incremental revenues from those products, I know it's difficult to be precise, but over the next 18 months, couple of years, what could we expect from those Positive Data products?
I'll let Lloyd handle the revenue question, Andy. Thank you.
Andy, we think of the Positive Data products really as integrated propositions. We sell them differently across different client sets. We don't really call out the separate revenue that we expect that to bring. Clearly Positive Data is going to be a tailwind, not just in terms of the products we sell, but the feed through of what that will do to credit availability in the market, which then broadens our end market. Not specific answer, but we expect it to be a continual tailwind for quite a number of years. On margin, two ways I guess to answer this. If you look at the Latin America business without our consumer business, the margin would be about 4%, about 400 basis points higher. You can see the effect of the investment that we've been putting into the consumer business.
We've always said we think our consumer business at maturity can generate a margin of something around the mid-20s. Of course, if you look at North America, we're currently beating that and that business pays a royalty fee to the consumer bureau. It's actually accretive to group margins. That gives you a sense of where a mature market could get to. Clearly, we're a long way from that in Latin America, and we're really developing our market position. It's really clear. If you can carve out a relationship with consumers and be the leading brand, which we are today, and we're investing behind. There's a long runway then that you can monetize behind that, and that's what we're pretty excited about.
Yeah. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question then is from Anvesh Agrawal from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Just a couple of questions. On the Boost, really, I was wondering, once a consumer sort of receives the higher credit score through Boost, can he or she go to, let's say, a retailer or a bank to say that, "Please use my Experian Boost score"? If that is the case, then in that you obviously got tailwind on the B2B side of the business as well, rather than just on the B2C side. Consumer don't really have that power in terms of what credit score being used by the financers. Second, just a clarification. How much is the double running cost on the IT system, and when should we expect it to end? Thank you.
Just on the Boost proposition the way we've designed Boost is that it becomes an integral part of the credit pool. The lenders don't have to do anything to accept the Boosted score. They do have to decide to use it. As big a part of the proposition to the consumers is convincing the panels of lenders to make products available using the Boosted score. That does take some time, we now have a fairly significant panel of products which are being made available to U.S. consumers with the Boosted proposition, people really get different and better offers when they Boost their score. In the U.K. we've launched it last week. We were very adamant that we would launch with propositions in market, whereas consumers actually were able to Boost the score, they would see an enhanced proposition.
Obviously, that starts off with a limited number of offers, and we believe over time, as we saw in the U.S., that will extend as people get more and more comfortable. It's very much a two-way proposition, but the key is that it's seamless. Once the consumer Boosts, the information is available for use from the lenders, and they don't really have to do anything else but just consume the data. We put a lot of thought and effort into designing the product that way. Just a final point, really. We've only been in market five days in the U.K., but we already have 100,000 people in the U.K. who have Boosted their score through the platform. In one week, I think you can see the kind of impact that we can have in markets.
Anvesh, on the dual running costs, I called this out. I know some of our larger competitors report this separately outside of their benchmark operating profits. I called it out because it's in our base P&L. One of the reasons we continue to report it's almost impossible to clearly identify exactly what is a dual running cost. As we move to the cloud, we've clearly got existing fixed investment and fixed running costs with spare capacity on our owned infrastructure. You've got that dual running as you're then paying for cloud-related services. It's significant. It's tens of millions of dollars a year. Not identifiable with a degree of precision to call it out as an exact number.
Yeah, maybe just in terms of when we should expect it to end, if not the exact number. Does it continue next year as well or beyond that?
Oh, yeah. Our transition to cloud is a multi-year project. This would take us another three to four years in total to be completely onto cloud infrastructure. It's not a short-term effect.
Okay. That's great to hear. Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you. That was the end of the question queue.
All right. Well, thank you very much, everybody. That concludes today's session. Thanks for joining, and wish you all good day, and look forward to speaking to you again in the future.
Thank you, then. That does conclude the call for today. You may now disconnect. Thanks for joining. Have a very good day.