Okay. Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to our first half results presentation. I see you all here at all gathered. It's been a very good start to the year for Experian with growth at the top end of our expectations for half one. Really driven by our B2B businesses, which again, have delivered a really strong growth, but also a good performance in consumer with growth in the US in particular ahead of where we expect it to be for the first half.
We're confident that we can sustain these rates of growth into H2 and beyond. And so our business is performing really well. This has really been driven by 2 things. 1, we're seeing quite a lot of strength in the underlying portfolio. We're also seeing a lot of benefit from the new product introductions that we've introduced over the last few years, and we'll touch on that and on some of that in the presentation.
We're now focused on scaling our opportunities globally, taking innovations that we've developed in one market and rolling them out to more of our regions. And we think this gives us a really strong runway of growth going forward. As usual, Lloyd will take you through the detailed financials. I'll just pick out a few of the highlights here. At constant currency, our revenue was up 9%.
8% organically. That's both Q1 and Q2, and we delivered strong growth in every region. As I mentioned, B2B had another very strong year, up 9%, really driven by strong performance across all of our business, but particularly in the U. S. And consumer services was up 5%, again, up higher in the US at 8% and again fueled by successful product launches across all of our markets.
At constant currency, margins increased by 20 basis points and benchmark EBIT growth, was up by 10%. Benchmark earnings were up by 12% and we continue to return cash to shareholders, increased the interim dividend by 4% and we completed about $100,000,000 of our share buyback by the half. So overall in the first half a strong performance. Let's moving on to some of the key business and strategic highlights from the half. Now I think we spoke to you about this before, but our strategy is focused on combining sophisticated solutions with best in class data to enhance our competitive position.
And this strategy is really working well, and we've got a few examples to highlight that for you. Advanced analytics platform we talked to you about before Ascend is already a big success in the US marketplace. I'm now launching, in a lot of our other regions. The PowerCurve suite has had another standing half. And we signed 66 new deals for power curve in the half, and we're seeing success in every region.
Our integrate integrated fraud platform we talked to you about before called crosscore has performed really well again in the first half. Another 28 new agreements signed. And our SaaS based decisioning module, which we call Experian 1. And we've completed a lot of work on that in the first half. We're ready to go to market.
And we're pre selling in all regions and seeing a lot of interest in that proposition. We're also making a lot of the other innovations we've talked to you about over the years, things like text for credit, and in the UK, Verdes, which is our new platform, which enables clients to take of open banking regulations. And we're making great progress, across building out new datasets, another important element of our strategy. About a year ago, we talked to you about the acquisition of Clarity. Acquisition is going extremely well.
We're gaining momentum in the US marketplace with that. And we're also taking significant steps across our business to make consumer permission data a reality, and we'll talk to you about some of that, examples of that later in the presentation. As you know, we're focused on building direct relationships with consumers across all of our businesses, and we're making a lot of progress. Identity members in the US have tripled in the last year, free members across our 3 main geographies have reached over 45,000,000 consumers, and we're generating new income streams and lead generation although areas on on the back of those memberships. And in and Asia Pacific, we're supporting key partners with development of a new, what we call credit marketplaces, which I'll come on and describe in a few moments.
Now have you seen it in recent years, we've been positioning our business to take advantage of what we think are some pretty significant growth opportunities And we have talked to you about most of these things before, but let's just remind ourselves of what the key drivers are. The first is data. Data's proliferate and it's the intelligent use of data, which is becoming a really key business issue for companies in all industries, helping them make better use of their data to different business decisions. And the important point about requirements around ensuring good governance of data and security of that data is becoming ever more pressing for companies in every industry too. And that creates a tremendous opportunity for companies like Experian, which really have a trusted and strong relationship in helping the biggest companies globally dealing with key the analytics, the decision software products that are necessary to help people make sense of the of that, of those datasets.
And, actually, these are the areas where really Experian has a very significant advantage And working in tandem with this, what we're seeing is increasing demands being made by businesses, both consumers and B2B customers for better, faster, cheaper, and seamless interactions. Now let me give you one small example of what we mean by this. So in the U S, over the last few years, in our business information business, We've seen a very significant change in the way our clients access our data, and we've enabled this through the investment that we've made in our API suite. And this is a very flexible way to allow customers to access data by coding directly into Experian, and it gives them real time access and the ability to consume the data in the format that they want. And the result of this is that we're seeing more sales of data, more sales of scores, particularly on small and medium sized businesses and opening up new parts of the market for us to further our growth.
A slightly smaller, but I think in destructive example in our b is in our B2B business where we're finding that our B2B users are demanding that the products that we provide them have the same standards of design and intuitive interaction that you would see in modern day smartphones. And that's driving, a big investment in the front end of our systems and things like UI and making the seamless integration with how they use the products even better in for. So companies that can combine, powerful datasets with sophisticated solutions are gonna be very successful. And that's really the core of where Experian is focused. We've talked to you about that in the past.
We've labeled it one Experian, and it is actually expanding the market opportunities for us as a business, which I think is driving some of our underlying growth. Slide you see behind you lists some of the, segments that we think provide some very significant growth opportunities for us going forward. All of these will be multibillion dollar opportunities. And give us, I think, a long runway of growth in years to come. And some of the biggest opportunities are in areas like advanced analytics and for that, I think you need to think about products like Ascend.
For greater use of our decisioning tools, for that, I think you need to use to think of things Experian 1, but also machine learning and artificial intelligence enhancement we're making to the core decision products. And in areas like data management and integrated propositions. And for this, you need to think about products like consumer audience engine. Which combines things like our targeting business and our automotive data in real time to develop new solutions for our clients in those markets. And in the direct to consumer market, by applying the same capabilities that we apply to our B2B clients, we can open up new opportunities.
Best example of this, obviously, is the use of free credit reports and scores. The simplest combination of our product, which has opened up a multibillion dollar opportunity in the lead generation market. And also in B2B, I've mentioned Experian 1, which we're currently launching, and this is going to address a completely underpenetrated segment of the market for us in small midsized clients for advanced decisioning solutions, based on that we're going to market pretty soon. We think that market alone is about $2,000,000,000 in size. And all of these upper opportunities are significant, and they're all enabled by that strategy of combining best in class data with sophisticated solutions to solve key customer problems in each of these areas.
It's also been enabled by the organic investment that we've made in our business over the last few years, and that's what we intend to pursue going forward pursuing these initiatives at pace and at scale. Now turning to the regions, performance in North America was really strong. Was up 12%. Consumer business was up 8% so a great performance overall. The B2B business seeing strength across all the portfolio, driven by underlying good macroeconomic conditions, but significantly all so good contributions from new product innovation.
We talked to you about Ascend. It's been a great success We have a great pipeline of new opportunities and we expect that total contract value opportunity to continue to grow into H2 and beyond. Now these contracts usually involve not just the ascend proposition itself, but you generally tend to pick up a lot of additional analytics work. And more data sales as the tools become more embedded in client workflows. And the product itself continues to evolve and improve In addition to the core consumer credit data, we now have alter data, a clarity data, and business credit data available in the Ascent platform, and this is going to allow us to address new client segments.
Still a long way to go. The mid tier version will launch soon and that will address approximately 17,000 financial institutions in this segment in the US alone, and we have many more modules to follow. Cisioning business is going really well, consistently delivering double digit growth now. Clients are investing in modernizing the future, buying software and analytical tools, which again play to the trends we talked about earlier, cost, friction, better decision making processes, power curve suite is leading the way. We've secured several new major contracts for PowerCurve in the half and increasingly refining that our propositions are more and more bundled.
To give you a good example of this, we've signed a new deal with a major card issuer for fraud and identity solutions, and this is a multiyear deal over 15,000,000 in total contract value and includes really a wide range of tools, across our fraud propositions. Including crosscore, synthetic IG, precise IG, Bureau data attributes, clarity, and fraud scores. We're deeply embedded now in how this client, really, detects and prevents fraud. Health which is part of our decisioning business also performed extremely well. It's in a large and growing market.
It goes from strength We have a great pipeline, really strong performance in Q2 and we're very excited about the prospects of this business going forward too. So overall, the North America B2B business is performing very strongly, and we have a good line of sight as we head into H2. Turning now to Consumer Services, we're very pleased with performance in consumer services. We've achieved very, very good rates of growth, 8% for the half. This is actually ahead of where we thought, coming into this financial year, we were expecting it to be about mid single digit.
So very pleased with the progress. The identity product itself is going extremely well. We think we're going to break 300,000 members this financial year And then when you look at that from a financial perspective across the identity product and the lead generation products that we have across different markets, The consumer services new product introductions will be adding close to about a $100,000,000 of revenue for this financial year, pretty impressive for products that really only came into being, about 18 months ago. Capabilities that we have as an organization, to put consumers into control and control of their data, to drive stronger engagement and to make a positive difference. Identity was the first step in that, and we now have a deep product road map built on those concepts of consumer control protection and scale.
Million free members, which creates a very large audience for our consumer services. Our lead generation revenues are also growing well. And with a large free membership base, a stronger panel of offers and a differentiated proposition in the marketplace, we have a lot of confidence that we can continue to grow revenues in this segment going forward. And to give you just a small example of the sort of things we're doing to attract new consumer members. We recently launched something called Experian Financial Profile, which helps consumers to really see what the lenders see and I'm going to show you one of our ads to illustrate how this is positioning in the marketplace.
Could you play the video, please?
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So this is just one example, but since the launch of Experian Financial Profile in early September, we've had almost 3,000,000 consumers view their financial profile. And of those 3,000,000 consumers, 350,000 of them have also provided their income as part of the enrollment. And I think this is interesting because it demonstrates 2 things. 1, our ability to engage really large audiences with new propositions. And secondly, the ability for that engagement to drive additional data contribution to us as a Bureau.
Very important parts of our view of in Latin America. So growth in Latin America was 4%. Brazil delivered a low single digit growth. Brazil was a little bit behind where we expected to be. Year.
On the other hand, Spanish LatAm, really put in a great performance and is on a strong trajectory. I think the first half in Brazil was character arise by a lot of political uncertainty and low consumer confidence. I think some of the the recent elections, obviously, will add a little bit more clarity to It should be certainly in terms of what people are expecting in marketplace, a more pro business friendly government, and hopefully that will provide a stronger backdrop as we go into the second half and beyond. Now that said, our growth in Brazil varied by channel, We saw some really good growth across our largest clients, including the major banks, and that's really based on long term contracts we've signed with them, which are multi product bundles. And we're still seeing the same trends that we see in every marketplace in LatAm, which is importance of digital, the need to deliver those seamless customer experiences and a drive towards fully automated decisioning.
And so as a result of that, we're seeing really strong growth, which you can see in our decision analytics business for our cross core power curve, advanced analytics and for engagement with our data labs. The midsize market, which is the SME segment, as was the slightly weaker area in the half, I think that was a reflection of the weaker macroeconomic conditions, and we also had some drag effect from lower countercyclical revenues. Our consumer initiative in Brazil is going from strength to strength. We've enrolled over 25,000,000 free memberships that up from 16,000,000, when we spoke to you this time last year, and it's already been one of the most successful digital startups in Brazil. Now again, importantly, as consumers enroll in our products, we're also capturing consumer contributed data And by that, I mean things like email, telephone numbers, employer name, addresses, all of this sort significant additional information, which helps us identify and build a picture of of consumers.
We're adding that to our core file. And it's enhancing the B2B proposition that we have. We have a range of products that we're marketing in Brazil across a number of areas. Limpinome addresses the credit needy, helps them settle past debts. E cred, is our matching service.
Helping people want to check their eligibility for credit. And Sarasa anti fraud addresses a wealthier population concerned about protection. And we've also launched a B2B to see proposition in Brazil, which takes our capabilities and makes it available to our biggest partners in the financial services segment. That's going extremely well. So we're in the early days, but we're building big audiences.
We're starting to monetization. We're off to a really good start and we're very excited about the future prospects of our position in the consumer market in Brazil. Okay. Moving to the UK and I, the business was up 3%. We had good growth in B2B of 5%, and we had a further improvement in our Jeep business over the half.
Fundamentals in the market are pretty strong across credit and track wins in the half in our consumer information and decision analytics businesses in particular, and we're making a lot of progress in the UK and introducing new products We reached recently launched ASCEND in the UK, and there's a huge amount of client interest in that. And last week, We launched trended data in the UK, and we also recently added things like rental data to build out our alternative data assets. So a lot of development across the B2B in the platform. It's one of the best capabilities in the marketplace. It combines our own credit decisioning data with the ability to link into any external data, like current account data, and it's being used today to power our own credit comparison activities and to build fully digitized financial products and services for our B2B clients.
In particular, one of the areas that we think gonna be a a good growth opportunity for us is gonna be in the areas of eligibility and affordability, matching consumers more accurately to financial products, puts us into a great position with this platform. We think that's a global capability, and we expect to be rolling the Virtus platform out to more of our regions as we go through H2 and into the next year. Okay. So are UK Consumer Services we saw further sequential improvements, and we are expecting this business to return to growth in H2. We now have nearly 5,000,000 free members.
The central part of our strategy. And it's actually proved hugely successful. I'll remind you that we didn't actually have any free members about 2 years ago. So This is a really fast, scaling initiative for us. Credit Matcher, the proposition you have in marketplace has made great progress.
And our capabilities around things like eligibility are driving better user experience and better engagement. And this is where we can use our own capabilities particularly things like our own data and our own enabling technologies like Runpath and Truso, to develop the experience even further, providing quicker, then her and more certain outcomes for consumers. Now today, the revenues that we're generating, off the credit match up platform are mostly focused on cards and loans. Now we expect to develop into other segments like mortgage and we think that there's really a big opportunity to develop more and more of these financial market places as we go forward, really driven by data driven, recommendations, and we're well on our way to realizing this vision as part of our UK consumer businesses. Now moving on to EMEA And Asia Pacific, another really strong half, 13% organic revenue growth, and this is, I think, success story that we've had now for quite a number of years, double digit growth for the past 8 quarters, a big change from where we were a few years ago where this business was low single digit growth.
And I think this just reflects a huge improvement that we've seen across the strategic and commercial position in every market that we operate in. The region's always been very successful for some of our global products like power curve, and we're now taking more steps to introduce some of our other global products, in particular, Ascend, We've actually signed our first to send contract in Italy, and we have market launches in Spain and South Africa, which will follow in too. So a lot of opportunity as we look forward. As I referenced the start of my presentation, we're very excited about some of the opportunities that we see in Asia Pacific. Yeah.
There are roughly 1,700,000,000 on bank consumers globally, and most of these 800,000,000 or so reside in Asia and of course, if you think about this from a data perspective, makes it incredibly challenging to build a traditional credit bureau model. But with our capabilities, we are able to look at, using alternative data assets to develop scoring systems and to use that to drive our business forward. And we talked previously about our strategy to take some minority stakes in some fintech companies where we're closely aligned. And this is an example of how this works really well. We've taken another step in the half.
We took a stake in a company called C-eighty eight, and we've done that alongside a pretty broad range in strategic and commercial agreement. CATH is the parent company of Czech Asia, and this is one of Southeast Asia's fastest growing comparison sites in Indonesia and in the Philippines. Now what's interesting about this is that we are providing the platform to power what we call a credit marketplace. We take data from multiple different sources including bank data, including telco data, including, you know, data that we can gather from, social media and and lots of other sort of inputs that we have and we use that to develop a bespoke scoring system. And that's bespoke scoring system then leads to decisioning tools, which we make available to check Azure on their platform, and we've really developed what we call an alternative data asset being used in that marketplace.
And we think this is very significant opportunity in this particular example, but also something that we're looking to replicate in more places across Asia. And a great example of our strategy to not only develop these propositions, but to share in the economic side. We believe this is gonna power their business, and we believe that by having a minority stake, and that will benefit economically as well. And a really an example of how we work with alternative data to look at how we develop information assets and scoring systems of the future. So, quick summary before I hand over to Lloyd, we're very pleased with the progress that we've made in the first half.
As you can see, the B2B business is performing really strongly. New product innovation has elevated our performance, particularly in North America, evident in the first half. Products like Ascend and other global products that we have the opportunity to roll out globally, give us a lot of confidence about the future. You can see the steps that we're taking to improve our data coverage, not just in in our traditional large markets like North America, but also in newer places like Asia Pacific, And the potential in consumer services we believe is significant. We're very pleased with the progress that we've made this year.
North America growing strongly, and we believe that's now on a sustainable trend. And we believe the UK will be back to growth shortly. And in places like Brazil, we're really just getting started. So we've had a good start to the year, and we expect to maintain this momentum through the rest of FY19. And we've got strong foundation for sustained performance into FY 2020.
And so with that, I'm going to hand you over to Lloyd.
Okay. Thanks, Brian. Good morning, everyone. I'll start as usual with a recap of our key financial metrics and then go on to review the results in a little more detail. And as Brian mentioned, we've made some good strategic and financial progress during the half sustaining the high rates of underlying growth.
We delivered another strong performance across our B2B portfolio and made excellent progress with new product introductions and also scaling. Growth in consumer services improved as our strategy to diversify revenue with new products gathers momentum. And with strong progress through the first half. We now expect full year group organic revenue growth to be in line with the first half at the top end of our previous guidance range. We reported good first half cash conversion, and directed capital mainly at organic activities in the half.
And, as you'll see, FX remains volatile, with translation headwind in the half due to the weakness in the Brazilian real but also across a basket of other developing market currencies. So on to the highlights, as you've heard, we continue to grow well in the second quarter. For the half as a whole, we reported total revenue growth at constant rates of 9%, organic growth of 8% and foreign exchange was a 2% headwind in the half. Benchmark EBIT margin was 27.5%, up twenty basis points at constant currency and down 10 basis points after taking account of the foreign currency headwind. Benchmark EPS grew 12% at constant currency and 8% at actual rates, so a 4% headwind from currency and EPS level.
And cash conversion was 74% in our traditionally week and a half for cash generation and operating cash flow at constant currency was up 28%. And finally, given the progress in the half, the board's approved a 4% increase in the first interim dividend. Turning to look at organic revenue growth in a little bit more detail. On the left, you can see the organic growth for our B2B business. And as you can see, the growth across the business has been consistently strong.
We delivered 9% in the first half as our investments in innovation and new product development showed through in sustained high growth rates. And these high growth rates have been delivered despite macro weakness in our Brazilian business. On the right hand chart, you can see that our Consumer business has sustained the momentum that we saw at the end of last year with organic revenue growth of 5 percent in the half overall. Looking inside that, the U. S.
Consumer business was ahead of our expectations, and we reported growth of 8% in the half, whilst the UK reported an improving result with declines of 8% in the first quarter moderating to 4% in the second quarter and 6% for the half overall. And as Brian mentioned, with this trend, we expect the UK business continue to improve and crossover into growth at some point during hand chart has progressed well over the last year as our strategy to introduce our new product propositions and diverse via revenue streams has taken hold. Looking at revenue performance in the half, you can see the revenue growth was broad based. North America B2B delivered another strong quarter with double digit organic growth 12% for the half. This includes the new product introductions of trended data, ASCEND and continued robust double digit growth in health and decision analytics.
Latin America delivered growth despite the poor macroeconomic conditions in Brazil, and UK B2B performed well, reflecting some big client wins and strong growth in HD decisions and run path. With a strong pipeline for the rest of the year underpinned by our market leading position in analytical and open banking service mirror Asia Pacific was very strong with double digit growth in both subregions during the half. And as I've just covered, we made strong progress in consumer services with an aggregate growth of 5%. Acquisitions contributed 1 percentage point to growth with our clarity alternative data acquisition performing significantly ahead of our operations. Therefore, total constant currency revenue growth was 9%.
As I mentioned, FX was very volatile during the half and overall represented about a 2% revenue headwind, which takes us to 7% revenue growth for the group as reported. Turning to the EBIT margin progression overall, our operating margin progressed in line with expectations we laid out at the start of the year with constant currency revenue sorry, constant currency margins up 20 basis points. Looking across the regions and starting from the rebased prior year margin of 27.6 percent, We delivered strong to be more second half weighted this year. There was good progress in EMEA, Asia Pacific as these regions continue to scale. Margins in Latin America dipped slightly, mostly reflecting the investment we're making in the consumer services startup.
And margin in the UK were reflected the effect of our consumer services business and higher net investment behind our new B2B product introductions and related infrastructure. Acquisitions provided a slight uplift to margins of 10 basis points due to the strong performance of the Clarity business, And therefore, overall, EBIT margins were up 20 basis points on a constant currency. And after a 30 basis points FX headwind, we reported margin for the group was 27.5 percent. Looking at the regional results. Where I'll comment on the results in constant currency.
In North America, total revenue growth was 13% with organic revenue growth of 10% and the acquisition contribution came principally from clarity. Data grew strongly, up 17% overall with organic revenue growth of 12%, reflecting growth in credit volumes. Mortgage performed strongly, driven by related data contract, and there were good contributions from Ascend, business information, and Automotive. And importantly, our pipelines for new products continue to grow strongly, including the introduction of our mid market Ascent platform. Priority services I mentioned is performing well ahead of buy plan and will be within organic growth for the second half of the year.
Decioning, which encompasses both decision analytics and health, delivered double digit growth of 10% Health was double digit across all product lines and we're executing well in decision analytics with a very strong pipeline for new products. Combined across these segments, B2B growth was 12 percent organically. In Consumer Services, growth was mostly driven by the great progress in identity and a growing contribution from our credit marketplace services, which you saw in Brian's presentation. Partners Solutions also had a good half as we expand our position and add new clients, with some additional new contracts for breach support. So overall, in North America, our EBIT was up 20% and a margin of 34.4% 200 basis points.
Turning to Latin America where organic growth was 4% with 0 growing low single digits. Growth in data was flat overall, reflecting the weak macro environment and political uncertainty in Brazil, particularly leading to weakness in our mid market vertical. Decioning had a great half year, up 31% as we signed some large multi year contracts with institutions in Brazil and secured wins for soft where, across the LatAm region. And benchmark EBIT overall was down 2% with margin the investment we're making in the Brazilian consumer business. And while said actual, FX rates EBIT reflected the weaker Brazilian real.
Over to the U. K. And Ireland, where organic B2B growth was 5% which more than offset the decline in the Consumer Services business and total organic growth was 3%. Organic revenue in data was up 3% with good growth in background checking and credit prequalification volumes. Decisioning performed well, up 9% organically with notable wins for software, which benefited Q1 in particular and we have a strong pipeline for the rest of the year for the new products that we've been pre investing in.
And that brought the UK's total B2B organic growth rate to 5% overall. To the UK and also in presales activity. And this includes the full market introduction of DSM platform, trended data, and our Experian 1 SaaS platform. An early market reaction has been strong and the pipelines are building well for these products in the U. K.
Consumer services declined by 6 percent and declines in our subscription product continue to moderate, and our marketplace continues to grow well. This led to the decline moderating from 8% in the first quarter to 4% in the second, and we're confident with that trajectory that we'll reach the inflection point into growth during the second half. As I mentioned, overall EBIT declined by 14% due to the consumer services revenue reduction and the higher net investment we're making in the products and infrastructure in advance of the new product we're launching in the second half. And as the products are introduced, we expect the investment headwinds to substantially reduce in the UK in the second half. Over to EMEA, Asia Pacific, which both performed really strongly, up 13% overall.
Date was 4% higher as double digit growth in Southeast Asia and India was partially offset by some softness in our European business. Decisioning performed very strongly, across both EMEA and Asia Pacific, up 20% as we secured multiple new agreements for decisioning software and analytics and marketplace on boarding partnerships progress well. We're very pleased with our progress across the region, especially in some of our high potential markets, including in India, where we grew over 30%, SAS east Asia, where we grew 40% and in South Africa where our growth was over 50%. So some strong individual country performances within these regions. And that resulted in significant improvement in constant currency EBIT, growth of 37%.
Reported EBIT was flat, reflecting the of the Turkish lira South African rand and the basket of other currencies. Turning now to E EPS, starting with the first half, 'eighteen, the benchmark EPS rebase for IFRS 15 was $0.452 per share. Growth in benchmark EBIT from ongoing activities was 10% reflecting the strong organic growth performance. Interest expense increased $56,000,000 as interest rates started to increase and the tax rate was 25.3 percent, reflecting the reduced U. S.
Tax rates. We saw a benefit from the share repurchase program with weighted average number of shares at $907,000,000 for the half. And EPS was therefore up 12% on a constant FX basis, continuing the EPS progress from last year. And after the FX headwind, we reported through results, you can see amortization of acquisition intangibles increased slightly to 56,000,000 before noncash financing remeasurement, statutory profit was $379,000,000. Non cash remeasurements.
The financing activities increased from $12,000,000 to $58,000,000, principally due to non cash foreign exchange reevaluations on Brazilian real intergroup funding. So statutory profit from continuing operations was therefore $321,000,000, down 12% on the prior year. Over to cash flow performance, the conversion rate of benchmark EBIT into operating cash was 74%. Half one's traditionally the weaker half of the year. And as this customary, we expect cash generation to strengthen in the second half into the mid-ninety percent range.
Year on year growth of benchmark operating cash flow was 28% at constant FX rates. Operating cash flow was $478,000,000 and free cash flow was $339,000,000, representing a 77% conversion of benchmark earnings to cash. And onto the net debt reconciliation, you see we ended the half with net debt of $3,500,000,000, up nine 5,000,000 since the start of the financial year and net debt to EBITDA at the half year of two 0.2 times, well within our 2 to 2.5 times leverage range. As we've discussed and as Brian mentioned earlier, part of our innovation program, we've invested organically in new products as well as making a number of smaller minority and associate investments. Increasingly, we've been combining commercial agreements with equity ownership to capture more of the value of our products and services within partner organization And this slide shows a number of the investments we've made to date and shows the size of our equity ownership.
In this half, in particular, we invested in CATA the parent of checkazia.com, 1 of Southeast Asia's fastest growing comparison sites in Indonesia and the Philippines. And we also made smaller investments in the half in early stage health decision in business Medicaid and the fraud and ID startup denial. And we're building strong relationships with these organizations through our equity, interest, and commercial partnerships, and we've also had a strong pipeline of future opportunities. So you'll see add to this chart in future half. Looking at a little further foreign exchange, which has been particularly volatile across the first half, and I wanted to provide some little bit more detail for modeling on the FX impact of our results.
For us. FX is predominantly a translation effect, and the FX movements are converted into our U. S. Dollar reporting results. So whilst we earn revenue across a wide variety of currencies, the Brazilian real and the, sterling pound have the biggest potential to impact our reported earnings.
Accordingly, if we use the rates, we've seen in the last few weeks, we would expect full year foreign exchange to be around a 3% headwind to revenue and a 5% headwind to EBIT growth during the year. So given the volatility, particularly around geopolitical events, the table here shows a generic rule of thumb from current exchange levels for the translation effect on current foreign exchange. So as a rule of thumb, and I appreciate or depreciation of around 10% in the Brazilian real with very full year EPS by around 2 U. S. Cents.
And movements of 10% in sterling with very EPS by about 1%. And the difference represents the effects of the sterling based corporate costs along with the higher margin of the business in Brazil. Onto other modeling considerations the acquisitions we made during FY 'eighteen have now all annualized, so all within organic for the second half. As I just covered on FX, We expect it to be around a 5% headwind to EBIT growth in FY 'nineteen, and that's up slightly from the 4 we announced at Q1 and at a revenue level, that's about 3%. We continue to expect net interest to be around $110,000,000 excluding margins.
Benchmark tax rate will be around 26% and we expect cash tax rate to be in the high teens. And taking into account the share repurchase program we announced previously, the weighted average number of shares is expected to be around 903,000,000 for the year. And we expect CapEx to continue to be around 9% of revenue as we invest further in the innovation and technology program. So to summarize, we've delivered good financial and strategic progress in the first half with strong growth in revenue, constant currency EBIT margin progression and double digit earnings per share growth also at constant see. With a strong progress in the half, we now expect our strong full year organic growth to be in line with the first half with EBIT growth at or above revenue growth and strong progress in benchmark earnings per share all at constant currency.
And we continue to apply capital framework investing in innovation and strategic initiatives to drive our long term shareholder value. And with that, I'll hand you back to Brian.
Okay. Thanks, Lloyd. So it's been a good half. We've made a lot of progress, business, both financially, strategically, and through the target investments that we've made across our As we said in the presentation, we think we're in a good cycle for our business. We've got good organic growth coming through.
We have, I think, addressable that give us a long term runway of good growth opportunities going forward. And we see the trends in our market really playing into our favor, the requirement for more data, for more advanced analytical solutions, or playing into areas where our experience in particular has has great strength. Business in good shape. Technology has improved significantly. Our product innovation has improved significantly over the last few years.
We're bringing a lot of those products to market much more quickly where scaling them across lots of different regions. It's driving good rates of growth in our business, and we expect this to be able to continue as we look into the second half and the arms. So with that, I'm going to invite Carrie up to the stage to take your questions. Thank you. Ed.
Ed Steele from Citi. Clearly, you're very encouraged by the returns you're enjoying from the product investments that you've made in the last 2 or 3 years, you you've called out some annual revenue numbers for a couple of those inside consumer. You you've called out ASCEND times in both this presentation and the last couple, power curve as well. Are you able to give us a rough flavor for how big those are in terms of revenue contribution at the moment, please, and attached to that, could you remind us of how the revenue model works for those 2? How much of a typical I'm sure the contracts vary, but just trying to give us some flavors, how much of of those, revenues tend to be upfront versus of ongoing, please.
Okay. Alright. Okay. Yeah. So on on the sand, obviously, the pipeline is growing very strongly.
Earlier this year, we said we'd we'd pass a TCV of $50,000,000 and we continue to progress well through the $50,000,000 to $100,000,000 range. The average life for that is somewhere in the 3 to 5 year period. So you can see there's about a $10,000,000 a year revenue today. Obviously, the pipeline is growing pretty strongly. Powerco is growing really well.
And, I think the revenue model park of is, it varies by region depending on whether it's an installed solution or whether we host it. So it can be very different. Across the different product suite. So it's hard to give a particular rule of thumb on that.
To add to that. I mean, one thing that we perhaps haven't talked about much in our presentations is alongside the actual software products that we provide. We've also been making a lot of investments in our analytics capability, and so you're seeing really strong growth, across our analytics suites in every region. And they're actually very closely linked to the data contracts and to the, you know, the software solutions that we provide. So just remind me of the growth now.
What decision I'll 6, in the way we used to classify, it was up 18% globally in the half, so really strong growth and the pipeline growing very strongly. The some of the investments we've been making in the power code suite in the fraud and ID solutions. We saw some of the metrics in Brian's present really, really strong growth. And I'd say the decision analytics as a whole this year will be about a 3 quarters of a $1,000,000,000 business growing at very good rates. So you can see the strength of that portfolio.
Yes, good morning. It's Paul Sullivan from Barclays. Just following on from that, is is it possible to to try to disaggregate the US B2B growth into the structural product innovation component relative to sort of more cyclical volumes. And how important has market share gain from Equifax been in the first half year.
So, do you wanna deal with the structural? I'll come back
to that. Yeah. I think, you know, if you look back to the previous cycles, the portfolio has changed quite a bit in North America. So, if you think our health business, which was a new business that this year, that will be about a 3 $60,000,000 business that you would argue is subject to different structural drivers. Our decision analytic business growing very well.
Now in North America, our BI business are growing high single digit. These businesses that are growing on structural trends of market share, take off competitors, or on, you know, just the growth in decisioning products. The key bit within our humor beer obviously has a volume effect, but new products this last year have really, have really powered the growth rate. So it's hard to aggregate those 2, but it's a strong growth position.
Just on second, Paul. I think it's it's sort of easy to get focused on kind of market share gains. We think of it in a much more broad sense. So we're winning in the marketplace really against a lot of different competitors. I mean, if you look at some of the businesses, they don't necessarily directly compare us.
So for example, our health business, which is growing double digit, you know, Equifax TU, TU has a bit of a business and health Equifax doesn't. Decisioning products, you don't really see competitors in that marketplace, obviously, Ascend, even though there are some competing propositions, they're nowhere near the capability that we have. So we're really creating that market for ourselves. And there's always sort of a bit of give and take, and we're doing very well. But I think in most of this, is actually down to the the things that we've done in our business to position ourselves better, and that's really what's driving our growth.
And just to follow-up in order for us to sort of understand the sustainability of growth to FY 'twenty, are you able to give us an impression of how the, of how product innovation and the introduction of new new initiatives over the next 12 to 18 months compares to the last 12 months?
Well, sure. I mean, I I'm gonna actually ask Keri to comment on this, because I think what you're really seeing today is actually the result of stuff we've done over the last sort of really 4 years. And then you don't just suddenly turn a on on innovation happens in any, you know, half year or a year. So, you know, I think we're joined the benefits of that investment. We're very focused on continuing that runway going forward and we continue to invest at pace in our business.
Actually, we've got a very significant, I think, pipeline of changes going forward. A lot of work going into that this year. Carrie, do you wanna come come in?
Yeah. That's right. We also I I think the way that we think about it is that and how we prioritize our opportunities. There are so many out there to pursue. And so we spend a lot of time staying focused on the ones that are in our core area that we know that we can compete and win at.
But I think it's safe to say that the, number and velocity of innovations continues to grow versus, you know, stay flat, going forward from our perspective.
Yeah. Two things I'd add, Paul, I think if you look at our 8% guidance for the full year, so 8% for the second half, that's pretty evenly spread. So we expect around 8 in both the 3rd and the 4th quarter. And we have some pretty tough comps in the 4th quarter, so that gives you sense of the strength of the innovation pipeline. And within that, we're not assuming that Brazil gets significantly better I think we've seen continued macro weakness there.
We'll see how the new, the new government shapes and forms policy. So 8% given tough comps and macro weakness tells you, I think a bit of that strength of the underlying
Sully from Bank of America. A couple of questions from my side. First of all, you mentioned the new trendy date opportunity in the UK. Is there a chance that you could try to quantify? Should we assume something quite similar to what already have in the U.
S? First question. 2nd question, probably if you can comment on the margin in the medium term that you had you have experienced a very good progression in H1 in the B2C segment. And third question is an update on the acquisition of ClearScore. Is there anything you can say?
I you're still comfortable that you will be able to close this acquisition and what is your assumption around timing. Thanks.
Okay. Well, let's deal with these in reverse order. Clear score relatively easy because we don't have any additional updates. We're still in the CMA process. Phase 2, we'll complete over the next few weeks.
We'll get their preliminary findings and then we'll we'll find out where we move from there. So That's all we could say on that. I'm trying to date in the UK, less a relatively new product, So we're just in market. I think it's actually quite hard to size. What we're seeing is a lot of interest in it.
But I think too early for us to be able to say, you know, give you a quantum around that. A lot of excitement, but early stages. And then on the medium term outlook,
Roy, do you
want to say that?
Yes, I think, Samani, you mentioned the progress in the first half farm consumer. That was really around the phasing of marketing spend in the U. S. You'd expect to see that probably reverse in the second half and some strength in B2B as some of the investment headwinds, it taper out. I think we this year, we said margin would progress and that unchanged.
I think as we look out, the consumer business has the potential, as we've said, to generate good margins in the 20 5% range. Obviously, in any individual year, it depends on how you're investing for growth. And the B2B business, you've seen some of the operating leverage we can produce equally we need to invest. So, you've seen some of the benefits that we're getting in our growth rate from the we've made in the previous years. So we should be able to deliver operating leverage, but obviously we're going to be investing alongside like that.
So if I if I may just a very quick follow-up. So if I yes.
Just restrict the questions
If I understand yeah. So if I understand in B2B, the margin progression is mostly operating leverage whereas in the B2C will be just coming from, obviously, mostly, going back to growth also in a
in the UK. In in in the year, the B2B margin reflects operating and investment. So you've seen in the UK, we've been investing pretty heavily. But then over time, obviously, it's the phasing of that investment plus operating leverage. The net impact will be where we get the progression in B2B.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I will stick to two questions. So the first one is on M and A. So you showed a nice table now about your investments. And also you commented that each of these investments is complemented with commercial deals. Just in terms of how we understand or say how you approach M and A is when you when you do M and A, it's like getting a commercial agreement also a deal breaker, I.
E. Every time you get some M and A effectively, you're also able to generate some additional business for you. That's the first question. And secondly, it's about going back to, I think, slide 5, about you mentioned a multi $1,000,000,000 opportunities in many verticals. Now, multi $1,000,000,000 is a big figure.
Is that basically in your area already of expertise? Or when you talk about multi $1,000,000,000 that includes, say, also say new areas where effectively you don't yet have a product which no potential in a 3, 5 year view you might enter, so to say. So how much is a you already have a product. It's a bit of tweak, and you can address it how much is actually now we need to develop new products. Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. So let's deal with the M and A 1. The slide that I think you were looking at was specific around minority investments. And just deal with that for a second.
We're not going to make minority investments just for the sake of making minority investments. There has to be some criteria. First of all, it has to be in an area that's strategically right in the center of what we do. And secondly, you know, we want to generally strike some form of commercial agreement. This is actually slightly the other way around.
Most of these companies want to work with us because of the capabilities that we bring, be that data, be that decisioning, be that the expertise scoring. And we know, and we've seen that in many cases, when we actually provide our capabilities to a lot of these companies, it fuels their business. It fuels their growth. So the minority investment is really kind of almost the other way around. If we're gonna help leapfrog your in terms of growth and capability.
We want more than just the commercial agreement. We want a strategic agreement, and we want to benefit from that in as many ways as you can. And that allows a much closer partnership to develop with, us and the company in question. Some of these, opportunity lead to really quite strategically interesting areas. Some of them might become acquisition candidates for us in the future.
One of them we had in this slide but didn't talk about was You probably heard FICO's results about FICO Ultra Finicity is a really important component of that. So you can see how something like that can work into a broader agreement When we come to buying businesses that we want to consolidate fully, so full blown M and A, you know, we're very focused on the areas that we want to buy in. They're usually incredibly synergistic, you know, where we can not only enhance our, strategic and competitive position, but hopefully, you know, generates some savings either through data or other synergies. I think you've seen that coming through in the Clarity acquisition. It's an alternative data asset focused on thin file in North America.
It couldn't be more central strategically to us than any acquisition we've done and you're seeing the success we're having with that. So we continue to look for those opportunities absolutely to, you know, to do full blown M and A with. Some of these investments are also focused on businesses that are quite young and very early in their stage of development and growth. We often judge it's too early to buy a business like that. It wouldn't be the right thing for us, wouldn't be the right thing for them.
So it's those sort of factors that we really take into account when we look at when we look at M And A. And, sorry, just remind me your second question was?
They have multi $1,000,000,000 up
Yes. Sorry. Yeah. So, you know, we we referenced Experian 1, which was the mid tier decisioning opportunity, which is global at $2,000,000,000. That's not guess work.
We've done extensive market research on that. In fact, we think the market is actually much bigger than that. The 2,000,000,000 is the the immediate market opportunity that we can address now with the modules that we're developing. You can go across to lots of other industries that we don't serve well today, and you can see that actually growing much bigger than that. So the 2,000,000,000 is very focused on, verticals and capabilities that we know we can address, and the modules that we're developing are specifically designed to address them.
So I think if you take lead generation, we've sized that specifically today, a $2,000,000,000 opportunity in North America today. We believe it can grow to somewhere between $5,000,000,000 $7,000,000,000 in size. Again, not stuff we've made up. We've had specific market assessments done. So all of them are really based extensive research.
Now that doesn't mean that they're going to happen automatically. We have to have the right products and propositions. We have to build the capabilities. We have to and sometimes in changing our sales our sales forces to be able to address new particular verticals or even product sets. So there's a lot to play for and really that's where you're seeing our investment going behind these new propositions.
And of course, we're not going to get them all right. Some of them we'll, you know, I'm confident we'll get enough of them right, but, but, you know, sometimes we're not going to get them right.
So does
that answer your question? Okay. Just go to the front here.
Good morning. It's Rory McKenzie from UBS. 2 on consumer, please. Within that area, can you talk about lead generation and just pull together across the U. S, UK and LatAm, where you are in terms of platform capabilities, the credit offers and partners you've signed up and ideally the revenue, if possible.
And then secondly, on the UK, can you talk about the competitive landscape in particular with the shift in ownership of one of the players in that market, please?
Yeah. Lloyd, do you want to talk about the revenues? Come back.
Yes. So overall, we said this year, if you take the 3 geographies, we'd expect lead gen revenue to be a little over $45,000,000. So, the majority of that is in the U. S. And the UK growing very very strongly.
Take that add on identity and we're over $100,000,000 for the year as a whole. Obviously, the run rate we exit the fourth quarter will be higher than that given the very strong growth we've got. And, we've very much developed the platform that we're using in conjunction across the three businesses. So there's a lot of sharing commonality around the platform. Some differences clearly in individual markets, but there's a lot of sharing.
On the competitive landscape, and this is a competitive marketplace. It always has been, and we expect it to be going forward. I think you're referring to Karma's purchase of novel. We expected that. We expected that to happen once to you ball call credit.
So it, I mean, it doesn't really change our active on the marketplace. What I would say is this is actually at the early stages of market evolution. You've seen us actually take a position and build a proposition very quickly. I think there's going to be a lot of growth available in this market. So it's going to many players.
And we're just going to continue to focus on the strategy that we've set out, which is bringing our propositions making them available in the consumer marketplace is beneficial to consumers, putting these capabilities in their hands, building engaging propositions, if we can do that successfully, we will be successful. And back to Andy.
Hi. It's Andy Grabler from Credit Suisse. Can I ask a slightly broader question? You were talking about that your business in in, in Asia Pacific that you bought with alternative data assets. And I just wondered what your view was of of bureaus of scores built using alternative data assets versus traditional in terms of the efficacy of those of those scores and how you see that developing over a period of time, is it, or could they become a threat to your core business, or is it something additional that you can take advantage of.
It. So you have very well developed credit systems and scoring systems in some markets and you have undeveloped credit systems and scoring systems in other markets. In Asia, you don't really have a developed credit system in that there isn't really enough information on enough of the population for that to be comprehensive. So you have to look to alternative forms of data to build a picture on enough consumers and to enable them to be credit visible and therefore scoring scoreable. In Asia, Pacific in particular, the most instructive form of data is telco data, which we have access through through a business that we call called Experian Microanalytics, where we've developed scoring systems based on consumers that engage in prepaid mobile phone contract We provide those services back into the big telcos.
And that specific example is linking data like that and the available data to the financial system to build a more comprehensive picture. So I think the answer is is that it's not one data source It's actually multiple data sources coming together to create an asset, which then creates a scoreable population set. Over time, in these actually that the regulations that are already evolved in the UK and the US will become more prevalent over time. I think that's going to lead, you know, in some cases, to some information sets not being available for use that part today. And I think you know, we're going to see that in the developing markets really evolve.
Whereas in the developed markets, we're going to see, I think, a continuation of a strict focus on what data what can be used for what and a tight regulatory regime around it. Gary, do you want to add anything to that?
A couple of things to that. Andy, if you work with any data scientists around the world, they will tell you that the best predictor of if someone is going to pay their debts in the future is what they've historically done with paying their debt. Bar none. There's no greater predictor out there than what a person has historically done in terms of paying their debts. And and so in Mark It's where a credit bureau is established.
That is the best source of truth in terms of what the person will do the future or our small business. In these alternative markets that are developing, I think they will actually lead to a more, more opportunities for credit bureaus to be established. The reason is that the financial market will develop and the governments will need to understand what's going on they'll need to have visibility. And if all of the lending decisions are done off of alternative data, that's very hard for the government to understand how the lending is being done that will push the governments to to having better visibility into the lending processes. And I'll push them for doing things like requiring and mandating that the bank share the data so that they can have a single source of truth and monitor the creditworthiness and the credit trends in that particular market.
It's not gonna happen overnight, but as these developing, countries use these alternative sources of data, I believe it, has a pathway for us that it will develop to, normal credit bureau type markets in the future. Opportunity for our industry and our business than a threat.
Thank you. K.
If we could just go next step, and then we'll we'll take a question on the
Thanks very much. Good morning, Tom Sykes from Deutsche. I wondered if you could just talk about the behavioral changes across your model as interest rates are going up. You've got assessed interest rates on cards at very high in North America mortgage rates going what's happening to sort of refi activity and and how the model you've built now is sort of interest sensitive or not compared to where we were in sort of 20six-seven? And then maybe if you could just us explain the difference in the EBITDA margin and the EBITA margin because your depreciation is obviously down on where we were 4 years ago now.
And so just trying to nail that one down, so we're just clear on why there's a difference in the margin move there, please.
Okay. Carrie, do you want to comment on the interest rates in the US market?
Yeah. So, you know, interest rates still are historically fairly low in the US market. Mortgages may be around 4 a half percent right now. Maybe they're touching to 5%. And so that has had, you know, some impact on what's going on, but, you know, not a great impact in terms of the of middle America mortgages.
The high end mortgages have certainly taken a hit because interest rates have gone up and the tax law change. So a big part of what's going on with mortgages in the US market is that a significant chunk of your interest is no longer deductible for high income earners. And so that's really had a negative impact on that part of the market. But in general, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that interest rates in the US market are significantly hampering consumer lending at all at this point in There's still a couple of points below, I believe, where we were in 2006 and 2007 leading into the to the financial crisis. I think they were more closer to 6 or 7% at that point in time.
Is that the same on carts? Is that the same on the Cox.
Credit cards don't change too much in the US market. They're typically capped maybe at 18%. They could have a floating rate, but, typically, the 18 or 23 percent, cap on the max interest rate. And then beyond that, it's it's not a the interest rate on credit cards are not a driver for consumers typically on whether or not they're borrowing on their credit cards. The other factors
Okay.
Thank you.
Now on EBIT, versus EBITDA margin, 2 things to highlight. The first is the effect and EBITDA level is different. Brazil is a higher margin business. Obviously, we've had the effect effect hitting Brazil this last year and depreciation is higher in Brazil. So you see a bigger FX effect.
And also the step up we had in our capital, the last a couple of years. We went from 11% capital down to 7% up to 9% if you just look back a few years. The ramp of capital to the 9% from 7% hasn't really flowed through into high depreciation rates yet. You'll see that as a number products really get underway over the next few years. Those are the things that really explain at this time.
To narrowing of the EBITDA to EBIT ex FX?
Yeah, really, I guess it really depends on where our growth rate goes, but you'll certainly see the, the growth in the depreciation charges. We see some of the investment come through in the depreciation line.
We're going to go to a question on the line and then we'll
come back.
Brett from Stevens. Can you all hear me okay?
Yeah, we can. Thank you. Good morning, Brock.
Great. Thanks for taking my questions. I have 2 quick ones. First, on mortgage a little bit of a follow-up. I know you don't have a bunch of exposure there, but can you remind us of what that revenue exposure is?
And then maybe give us a flavor on how the revenue looked or maybe how units looked for you ex the trended data to try and get a sense of that. So question number 1. And then question number 2 is a little bit bigger picture. You've talked a lot about on credit match and text to credit and things like that of prepopulating forms to help people as they intermediate their personal financial lives. Can you talk about what the kind of killer app that you see maybe on the horizon there.
Is it really just still matching credit cards or is there something else out there that you're seeing early signs of where you really think that you can use your unique position in the marketplace to really drive a better ROIs for standing up for particular credit products. Thanks again. Do you
want to deal with the, the mortgage?
Yeah. Mortgage bread is about 3% from the introduction of the trended data products. Out with that, we saw volumes down mid single digit. So, a lot of the growth coming from, from the training data products.
Yeah. Brett, I think in, in terms of the killer app, what I would say is I think if you look at the product roadmap that we have in our consumer services business, there's some very significant capabilities coming. A lot of those will be on the lines of the things that we talked to you about. Things like eligibility, things like better matching of products and services to consumers. But really more and more of our capabilities made available to consumers.
We obviously don't want to go into too much detail about exactly what that product roadmap is, but I think we're pretty confident that we can develop some very differentiated propositions in the marketplace. And that's what we're focused on as we look forward into H2 and beyond.
Great. Thank you.
Okay. We have a question here on the line.
Hi, good morning. It's Jozana Salati from Macquarie. I have three questions, please. First, Lloyd, do do we have to think about a very smaller headwind on organic revenue growth because of, IFRS 15 into fiscal year 2020, as in you have a slightly higher base, compared to the previous year. Secondly, Brian, you spoke, I think I picked up a monetization of Brazil as a theme.
Does that mean that you feel like you've you've gone a little bit well, a little bit, you're ahead of time in terms of investment. In Brazil. Yes. Does that mean that because we were expecting positive data and so on and so forth? You feel like you you've you're ahead of where you would want to be in terms of investments there.
You can step back a little bit, maybe. And, last one, really, really more generally. It seems like Experian has is positioned to become nearly a consumer data gateway, right? You you can trust it. You you it's definitely a very interesting use case for consumers, and you can keep this data.
Can we start thinking that Experian becomes a first, a first a level of your your core data.
Okay.
Does that really change?
Okay. Let's come back to the question on, direct that, Lloyd. A couple of points on monetization Brazil, I think we're pleased with the progress. We, you know, our initial focus was to build an audience at scale. A lot of that audience was, focused on, you know, essentially people who we're in the negative file.
So not necessarily sort of the richest theme in terms of credit products and propositions. What we're now focused on is actually extending that population so that we can build a broader audience where more credit offers can come. We are seeing good traction in that. We put some investments behind it. And I think we're pleased with progress.
Think we are a bit ahead of where we are, we expected, but the revenues are still modest. We do expect them to scale. We have ambitions for that to be sizable, but we need to continue to see that evolve next year and beyond to clear a complete victory on that. But early signs are encouraging. Your second question on, the, you know, 1st level of data.
I think that this is more, you need to think of this more as being able to look at data sources from a variety of different, from a variety from sources. So the ability to access data, not just from 3rd party contributions, but also from consumer contributed data. I think it's hugely important Small demonstration we gave you on financial profile. It sort of gives you a hint that, you know, there's actually some very interesting opportunities with things like income verification. The example we're giving you in Brazil, actually, that is one unexpected benefit that we had in Brazil from the consumer sign up was the extent to which actually that additional data was enhancing our B2B file.
Seconds enough for it to make some difference on the B2B side. So all these signs are quite encouraging. We think it's, you know, it's a viable and very useful strategy. I don't think it will ever replace, you know, because the scale network effect and sizeability of the data contribution we have from our partners all over the world. It's huge.
So so I think of it more as an augmentation and a build out of alternative data assets. It's one avenue for us to do that.
And now on on IFRS 15, when we outlined at the end of last year, on average, for our portfolio of products, we expect revenues to be a little bit later under IFRS 15, but that shouldn't affect our growth rates. So it's down last year, we restated down a little bit, but the growth rate into this year and this year into next year shouldn't really be affected by IFRS 15.
Okay. We got time for another question and then we'll call in a day.
Hi, morning. Just one question. Back on data, please can you talk about, your compliance with GDPR in the that it affects. And particularly, how you go about putting up Chinese walls between the different parts of your business and how data is be used within those and specifically talking about the privacy international story from this week? Thanks.
Yeah. Well, I've this is a huge focus for us. So what what I would say is that GDPR formalizes some of the procedures that we've been following for in our business for a long time. So we're fully compliant with GDPR. Chinese Walls are not an issue in our business.
We have always had strict segregation of what data can and can't be used for and it's policed very aggressively in the organization. So, you know, I think what we're, as I referenced earlier on, your your getting into a world where there's more focus on the compliant use of data. And we've said many times that this is actually something which is playing into experience strengths. We have long been a trusted steward of data. All of our clients understand our data governance compliance procedures are best in class.
We continually strive to do that. Every now and again, regulations change and we have to adopt and amend to that, but none of that really has had a significant impact on our internal procedures because of what we do is sort of have what we've developed over a number of years. So I think we feel very comfortable with, all of our internal procedures. And, you know, I think we'll we'll continue to see more regulation come at us, I think, in the future, none of which I think will be difficult for us to comply with or cope with. Carrie, do you want to add anything to that?
Think that's right. I think we feel very comfortable. We have tremendous compliance resources and processes. Spend a lot of time with our internal audit teams, and then we use regulators and our own customers as the litmus test. And each time they review us, the results are very positive, and they tell us that we are the leaders in in regards to how we handle the data and the compliance and and and, the safeguards that we put around it.
So we feel good where we're at.
Okay. I think we'll bring it to a halt there. So, thank you, everybody, for joining us today and we to speaking to you again in May.