Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to our first half results presentation. Nice to see you all here. I think you've all gathered it's been a very good start to the year for Experian, with growth at the top end of our expectations for H1. Really driven by our B2B businesses, which again have delivered really strong growth, but also a good performance in consumer services, with growth in the U.S. in particular, ahead of where we expected to be for the first half. We're confident that we can sustain these rates of growth into H2 and beyond. Our business is performing really well. This has really been driven by two things. One, 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. We'll touch 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. 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. 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.
Consumer services was up 5%, again, up higher in the U.S. at 8%, and again fueled by successful product launches across all of our markets. At constant currency, margins increased by 20 basis points. Benchmark EBIT growth was up by 10%. Benchmark earnings were up by 12%. We continue to return cash to shareholders, increase the interim dividend by 4%, and we completed about $ 100 million of our share buyback by the half. Overall, in the first half, a strong performance. Just moving on to some of the key business and strategic highlights from the half. I think we spoke to you about this before, our strategy is focused on combining sophisticated solutions with best-in-class data to enhance our competitive position. This strategy is really working well, and we've got a few examples to highlight that for you.
Advanced analytics platform we've talked to you about before, Ascend, is already a big success in the U.S. marketplace. We're now launching in a lot of our other regions. The PowerCurve suite has had another outstanding half. We signed 66 new deals for PowerCurve in the half, and we're seeing success in every region. Our 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. Our SaaS-based decisioning module, which we call Experian One, we've completed a lot of work on that in the first half. We're ready to go to market. We're pre-selling in all regions and seeing a lot of interest in that proposition.
We're also making a lot of good progress in a lot of the other innovations we've talked to you about over the years, things like Text for Credit, and in the U.K., Verdus, which is our new platform, which enables clients to take advantage of open banking regulations. We're making great progress across building out new data sets, another important element of our strategy. About a year ago, we talked to you about the acquisition of Clarity. That acquisition is going extremely well. We're gaining momentum in the U.S. marketplace with that. We're also taking significant steps across our business to make consumer permission data a reality. We'll talk to you about some 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 U.S. have trebled in the last year. Free members across our three main geographies have reached over 45 million consumers, and we're generating new income streams and lead generation in other areas on the back of those memberships. In 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. If you've seen it, in recent years, we've been positioning our business to take advantage of what we think are some pretty significant growth opportunities. 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 is proliferating, 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 drive different business decisions. The important point about this is that at the same time that data is proliferating, the requirements around ensuring good governance of data and security of that data is becoming ever more pressing for companies in every industry, too. 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 data issues. This not only drives demand for additional data itself, but more importantly, for the tools, the analytics, the decision software products that are necessary to help people make sense of those data sets.
Actually, these are the areas where really Experian has a very significant advantage. 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. Let me give you one small example of what we mean by this. 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. 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.
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 instructive example 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. 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 and better. Companies that can combine powerful data sets with sophisticated solutions are going to 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, it is actually expanding the market opportunities for us as a business, which I think is driving some of our underlying growth. The 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 multi-billion-dollar opportunities and give us, I think, a long runway of growth in years to come. 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 think of things like Experian One, but also machine learning and artificial intelligence enhancement we're making to the core decisioning products. In areas like data management and integrated propositions.
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. 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 multi-billion-dollar opportunity in the lead generation market. Also, in B2B, I've mentioned Experian One, which we're currently launching, and this is going to address a completely under-penetrated segment of the market for us in small, mid-sized clients for advanced decisioning solutions, based on a SaaS-based service that we're going to market pretty soon. We think that market alone is about $2 billion in size.
All of these 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. The B2B business was up 12%. Consumer business was up 8%, great performance overall. The B2B business seeing strength across all the portfolio, driven by underlying good macroeconomic conditions, but significantly also 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, we expect that total contract value opportunity to continue to grow into H2 and beyond. 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. The product itself continues to evolve and improve. In addition to the core consumer credit data, we now have auto data, clarity data, and business credit data available in the Ascend 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 U.S. alone, and we have many more modules to follow.
Decisioning business is going really well, consistently delivering double-digit growth now. Clients are investing in modernizing their future, buying software and analytical tools, which again play to those trends we talked about earlier, cost, friction, better decision-making processes. PowerCurve Suite is leading the way. We've secured several new major contracts for PowerCurve in the half. Increasingly, we're finding 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 multi-year deal, over $15 million in total contract value, and includes really a wide range of tools across our fraud propositions, including CrossCore, Synthetic ID, Precise ID, 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 to 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. 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 the performance in consumer services. We've achieved 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, 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.
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 $100 million of revenue for this financial year. Pretty impressive for products that really only came into being about 18 months ago. Our strategy in consumer services is to use the extensive capabilities that we have as an organization to put consumers in 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 roadmap built on those concepts of consumer control, protection, and scale. Our free membership in the U.S. is also growing very strongly. We have now 16 million free members, which creates a very large audience for our consumer services.
Our lead generation revenues are also growing well. 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. 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. 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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This is just one example, but since the launch of Experian Financial Profile in early September, we've had almost three million consumers view their financial profile. Of those three million consumers, 350,000 of them have also provided their income information as part of the enrollment. I think this is interesting because it demonstrates two things. One, our ability to engage really large audiences with new propositions. Secondly, the ability for that engagement to drive additional data contribution to us as a bureau. Very important parts of our view of the overall consumer strategy going forward. Moving on to Latin America. Growth in Latin America was 4%. Brazil delivered a low single-digit growth. Brazil was a little bit behind where we expected to be this 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 characterized by a lot of political uncertainty and low consumer confidence. I think some of the recent elections obviously will add a little bit more clarity to that. It should be, certainly in terms of what people are expecting in the marketplace, a more pro-business-friendly government, and hopefully, that will provide us 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. That's really based on long-term contracts that we've signed with them, which are multi-product bundles. 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.
As a result of that, we're seeing really strong growth, which you can see in our decision analytics business for CrossCore, PowerCurve, advanced analytics, and for engagement with our DataLabs. The midsize market, which is the SME segment, 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 counter-cyclical revenues. Our consumer initiative in Brazil is going from strength to strength. We've enrolled over 25 million free memberships. That's up from 16 million when we spoke to you this time last year. It's already been one of the most successful digital startups in Brazil. Again, importantly, as consumers enroll in our products, we're also capturing consumer-contributed data.
By that, I mean things like email, telephone numbers, employer name, addresses, all of this sort of significant additional information which helps us identify and build a picture 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. Limpa Nome addresses the credit needy, helps them settle past debts. e-Cred is our matching service, helping people who want to check their eligibility for credit. Serasa AntiFraude addresses a wealthier population concerned about identity protection. We've also launched a B2B2C 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 U.K. and I. The business was up 3%. We had good growth in B2B of 5%, and we had a further improvement in our G2C business over the half. Fundamentals of the market are pretty strong across credit and decisioning. Some very good contract wins in the half in our consumer information and decision analytics businesses in particular. We're making a lot of progress in the U.K. in introducing new products. We recently launched Ascend in the U.K., and there's a huge amount of client interest in that. Last week, we launched Trended Data in the U.K., and we've also recently added things like rental data to build out our alternative data assets.
A lot of development across the B2B portfolio in the U.K. In addition, we've talked to you before about our initiative in open banking and Verdus, our open data 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. 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 is going to be a good growth opportunity for us is going to 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. We expect to be rolling the Verdus platform out to more of our regions as we go through H2 and into the next year. Our U.K. consumer services, we saw further sequential improvements, and we are expecting this business to return to growth in H2. We now have nearly five million free members. This is an essential part of our strategy, and it's actually proved hugely successful. I remind you that we didn't actually have any free members about two years ago, so this is a really fast scaling initiative for us. CreditMatcher, the proposition we have in marketplace has made great progress, and our capabilities around things like eligibility are driving better user experience and better engagement.
This is where we can use our own capabilities, particularly things like our own data and our own enabling technologies like Runpath and [Trusso] to develop the experience even further, providing quicker, better, and more certain outcomes for consumers. Today, the revenues that we're generating off the CreditMatcher platform are mostly focused on cards and loans. 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 marketplaces as we go forward, really driven by data-driven recommendations. We're well on our way to realizing this vision as part of our U.K. consumer businesses. Moving on to EMEA and Asia-Pacific, another really strong half, 13% organic revenue growth. This is, I think, a success story that we've had now for quite a number of years.
Double-digit growth for the past eight quarters. A big change from where we were a few years ago, where this business was low single-digit growth. 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 PowerCurve, and we're now taking more steps to introduce some of our other global products, in particular Ascend. We've actually signed our first Ascend contract in Italy, and we have market launches in Spain and South Africa, which will follow in H2. A lot of opportunity as we look forward. As I referenced at the start of my presentation, we're very excited about some of the opportunities that we see in Asia-Pacific.
There are roughly $1.7 billion unbanked consumers globally, and most of these, $800 million or so, reside in Asia-Pacific. Of course, if you think about this from a data perspective, makes it incredibly challenging to build a traditional credit bureau model. 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. We talked previously about our strategy to take some minority stakes in some fintech companies where we're closely aligned. 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 C88, and we've done that alongside a pretty broad-ranging strategic and commercial agreement.
C88 is the parent company of CekAja, this is one of Southeast Asia's fastest-growing comparison sites in Indonesia and in the Philippines. 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 data that we can gather from social media and lots of other sort of inputs that we have. We use that to develop a bespoke scoring system. That bespoke scoring system then leads to decisioning tools, which we make available to CekAja on their platform. We've really developed what we call an alternative data asset that's being used in that marketplace. We think this is a very significant opportunity in this particular example, but also something that we're looking to replicate in more places across Asia.
A great example of our strategy to not only develop these propositions, but to share in the economic upside. We believe this is going to power their business, we believe that by having a minority stake in that will benefit economically as well. A really interesting example of how we work with alternative data to look at how we develop information assets and scoring systems of the future. 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 our traditional large markets like North America, but also in newer places like Asia Pacific. 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, we believe that's now on a sustainable trend. We believe the U.K. will be back to growth shortly. In places like Brazil, we're really just getting started. We've had a good start to the year, we expect to maintain this momentum through the rest of FY 2019, we've got a strong foundation for sustained performance into FY 2020. 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, then go on to review the results in a little more detail. 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. 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've got a good first half cash conversion, directed capital mainly at organic activities in the half.
As you'll see, FX remains volatile, with translation a headwind in the half due to the weakness in the Brazilian real, but also across a basket of other developing market currencies. 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 20 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 in the EPS level. Cash conversion was 74% in our traditionally weaker half for cash generation, and operating cash flow at constant currency was up 28%.
Finally, given the progress in the half, the boards 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. 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. 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% 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 U.K. 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. As Brian mentioned, with this trend, we expect the U.K. business to continue to improve and cross over into growth at some point during the second half. Taken together, you can see the consumer business on the right-hand chart has progressed well over the last year as our strategy to introduce new product propositions and diversify our 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 of 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. U.K. B2B performed well, reflecting some big client wins and strong growth in HD Decisions and Runpath, and with a strong pipeline for the rest of the year, underpinned by our market-leading position in analytical and open banking services. EMEA Asia Pacific was very strong with double-digit growth in both sub-regions during the half. As I've just covered, we made strong progress in consumer services with an aggregate growth of 5%. Acquisitions contributed one percentage point to growth, with our Clarity alternative data acquisition performing significantly ahead of our expectations. Therefore, total constant currency revenue growth was 9%.
As I mentioned, FX was very volatile during the half, 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 the expectations we laid out at the start of the year, with constant currency margins up 20 basis points. Looking across the regions, starting from the rebased prior year margin of 27.6%, we delivered strong margin progress in North America, reflecting good margin leverage also with marketing expense expected to be more second-half weighted this year. There was good progress in EMEA or 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.
Margin in the U.K. 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 Services business, therefore overall EBIT margins were up 20 basis points on a constant currency. After a 30 basis points FX headwind, the reported margin for the group was 27.5%. 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%. The acquisition contribution came principally from Clarity Services. Data grew strongly, up 17% overall, with organic revenue growth of 12%, reflecting growth in credit volumes. Mortgage performed strongly, driven by the Trended Data contract, there were good contributions from Ascend, Business Information, and Automotive.
Importantly, our pipelines for new products continue to grow strongly, including the introduction of our mid-market Ascend platform. Clarity Services, as I mentioned, is performing well ahead of buy plan and will be within organic growth for the second half of the year. Decisioning, which encompasses both Decision Analytics and Health, delivered double-digit growth of 10%. Health was double digit across all product lines, we're executing well in Decision Analytics with a very strong pipeline for new products. Combined across these two segments, B2B growth was 12% 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. Partner Solutions also had a good half as we expand our position and add new clients with some additional new contracts for breach support.
Overall, in North America, EBIT was up 20% and a margin of 34.4% up 200 basis points. Turning to Latin America, where organic growth was 4% with Brazil growing in 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. Decisioning had a great half-year, up 31%, as we signed some large multi-year contracts with institutions in Brazil and secured wins for software across the LatAm region. Benchmark EBIT overall was down 2% with margin reflecting mix, the investment we're making in the Brazilian Consumer Services business, whilst at 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, 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. We have a strong pipeline for the rest of the year for the new products that we've been pre-investing in. That brought the U.K.'s total B2B organic growth rate to 5% overall. Following the success of a number of the new product introductions, we invested during the half in bringing these products to the U.K. and also in pre-sales activity. This includes the full market introduction of the Ascend platform, Trended Data, and our Experian One SaaS platform. Early market reaction has been strong and the pipelines are building well for these products in the U.K.
Consumer services declined by 6%. 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. As the products are introduced, we expect the investment headwinds to substantially reduce in the U.K. in the second half. Over to EMEA, Asia Pacific, which both performed really strongly, up 13% overall.
Data 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 onboarding partnerships progressed 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%, Southeast Asia, where we grew 40%, and in South Africa, where our growth was over 50%. Some strong individual country performances within these regions. That resulted in a significant improvement in constant currency EBIT growth of 37%. Reported EBIT was flat, reflecting the translation of the Turkish lira, South African rand, and a basket of other currencies. Turning now to EPS.
Starting with the first half FY 2018, 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 to $56 million as interest rates started to increase, and the tax rate was 25.3%, reflecting the reduced U.S. tax rates. We saw a benefit from the share repurchase program, with weighted average number of shares at 907 million for the half. EPS was therefore up 12% on a constant FX basis, continuing the EPS progress from last year. After the FX headwind, we reported 8% growth in benchmark EPS. Looking at the usual reconciliation to statutory results. You can see amortization of acquisition intangibles increased slightly to $56 million. Before non-cash financing remeasurement, statutory profit was $379 million.
Non-cash remeasurements for financing activities increased from $12 million-$58 million, principally due to non-cash foreign exchange revaluations on Brazilian real intergroup funding. Statutory profit from continuing operations was therefore $321 million, down 12% on the prior year. Over to cash flow performance. The conversion rate of benchmark EBIT into operating cash was 74%. Half one is traditionally the weaker half of the year, and as is customary, we expect cash generation to strengthen in the second half into the mid-90% range. Year-on-year growth of benchmark operating cash flow was 28% at constant FX rates. Operating cash flow was $478 million, and free cash flow was $339 million, representing a 77% conversion of benchmark earnings to cash. On to the net debt reconciliation.
You can see we ended the half with net debt of $3.5 billion, up $95 million since the start of the financial year, and net debt to EBITDA at the half year of 2.2x , well within our 2x-2.5 x leverage range. As we've discussed, as Brian mentioned earlier, as 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 organizations. 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 C88, the parent of CekAja.com, one of Southeast Asia's fastest growing comparison sites in Indonesia and the Philippines.
We also made smaller investments in the half in early-stage health decision in business [Mediketh and the fraud and ID startup DenyAll. We're building strong relationships with these organizations through our equity interest in commercial partnerships, and we've also a strong pipeline of future opportunities. You'll see us add to this chart in future halves. Looking a little further at foreign exchange, which has been particularly volatile across the first half, and I wanted to provide a 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 reported results. 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. 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 foreign exchange. As a rule of thumb, an appreciation or depreciation of around 10% in the Brazilian real would vary full year EPS by around $0.02. Movements of 10% in sterling would vary EPS by about $0.01, and the difference represents the effects of the sterling-based corporate costs along with the higher margin of the business in Brazil. On to other modeling considerations.
The acquisitions we made during FY 2018 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 2019, and that's up slightly from the 4% we announced at Q1. At a revenue level, that's about 3%. We continue to expect net interest to be around $ 110 million, excluding acquisitions. Benchmark tax rates will be around 26%, and we expect cash tax rate to be in the high 10s. Taking into account the share repurchase program we announced previously, the weighted average number of shares is expected to be around 903 million for the year. We expect CapEx to continue to be around 9% of revenue as we invest further in the innovation and technology program.
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 currency. With a strong progress in the half, we now expect 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. We continue to apply our capital framework, investing in innovation and strategic initiatives to drive our long-term shareholder value. With that, I'll hand you back to Brian.
Okay. Thanks, Lloyd. It's been a good half. We've made a lot of progress both financially, strategically, and through the target investments that we've made across our business. 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 markets that give us a long-term runway of good growth opportunities going forward. We see the trends in our marketplace really playing into our favor. The requirement for more data, for more advanced analytical solutions, all playing into areas where Experian in particular has great strength. Business is 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. We're scaling them across lots of different regions.
It's driving good rates of growth in our business, we expect this to be able to continue as we look into the second half and beyond. With that, I'm going to invite Kerry up to the stage to take your questions. Thank you. Ed.
Okay. Thanks. Ed Steele from Citi. Clearly, you are very encouraged by the returns you are enjoying from the product investments that you have made in the last two or three years. You have called out some annual revenue numbers for a couple of those inside consumer. You have called out Ascend many times in both this presentation and the last couple, and PowerCurve 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? Attached to that, could you remind us of how the revenue model works for those two? I am sure the contracts vary, just trying to give us some flavors. How much of those revenues tend to be upfront versus ongoing, please?
Okay. Lloyd?
Okay. Yeah. On Ascend, obviously, the pipeline is growing very strongly. Earlier this year, we said we passed a TCV of $50 million, and we continue to progress well through the $50 million-$100 million range. The average life for that is somewhere in the three to five-year period. You can see there is about a $10 million a year revenue today, obviously, the pipeline is growing pretty strongly. PowerCurve is growing really well. I think the revenue model for PowerCurve varies by region, depending on whether it is an installed solution or whether we host it. It can be very different across the different product suite. It is hard to give a particular rule of thumb on that.
Yeah, just to add to that, I think one thing that we perhaps have not talked about much in our presentations is that alongside the actual software products that we provide, we have also been making a lot of investment in our analytics capability. You are seeing really strong growth across our analytics suites in every region, and they are actually very closely linked to the data contracts and to the software solutions that we provide. Just remind me of the growth in analytics.
Yeah. Well, decision analytics, in the way we used to classify it, was up 18% globally in the half, really strong growth, the pipeline growing very strongly. Some of the investments we've been making in the PowerCurve suite, in the fraud and ID solutions. You saw some of the metrics in Brian's presentation, really strong growth. I'd say the decision analytics as a whole this year will be about a three-quarters of a billion-dollar business growing at very good rates. You can see the strength of that portfolio.
Okay. Just the front here. Paul.
Yeah. Good morning. It's Paul Sullivan from Barclays. Just following on from that, is it possible to try to disaggregate the U.S. B2B growth into the structural product innovation component relative to more cyclical volumes? How important has market share gain from Equifax been in the first half of the year?
Do you want to deal with the structural, and I'll come back to that?
Yeah. If you look back to the previous cycles, the portfolio has changed quite a bit in North America. If you think of our health business, which was a new business, this year, that'll be about a $360 million business that I'll argue is subject to different structural drivers. Our Decision Analytics business growing very well. Now in North America, our BI business growing high single digit. These are businesses that are growing on structural trends of market share, take of competitors, or on just the growth in decisioning products. The key bit within our consumer bureau, obviously, it has a volume effect, but new products this last year have really powered the growth rate. It's hard to disaggregate those two. It's a strong growth position.
Just on the second part, Paul. I think it's easy to get focused on market share gains. We think of it in a much more broad sense. We're winning in the marketplace, really, against a lot of different competitors. If you look at some of the businesses, they don't necessarily directly compare. For example, our health business, which is growing double digit. Equifax, TransUnion. TransUnion has a bit of a business in 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. We're really creating that market opportunity for ourselves. There's always a bit of give and take, and we're doing very well.
I think that most of this is actually down to the things that we've done in our business to position ourselves better, and that's really what's driving our growth.
Just to follow up. In order for us to understand the sustainability of growth into FY 2020, are you able to give us an impression of how product innovation and the introduction of new initiatives over the next 12-18 months compares to the last 12 months?
Well, sure. I'm going to actually ask Kerry 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 really four years. You don't just suddenly turn a switch on and innovation happens in a half year or a year. I think we're enjoying 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 opportunities going forward. A lot of work going into that this year. Kerry, do you want to comment?
Yeah. That's right. I think the way that we think about it is that our innovation opportunities continue to grow to the extent that we have to be very specific in how we prioritize our opportunities. There are so many out there to pursue. 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. I think it's safe to say that the number and velocity of innovations continues to grow versus stay flat going forward from our perspective.
Two things I'd add, Paul. I think if you look at our 8% guidance for the full year, 8% for the second half, that's pretty evenly spread. We expect around 8 in both the third and the fourth quarter. We have some pretty tough comps in the fourth quarter, that gives you a sense of the strength of the innovation pipeline. 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 government shapes and forms policy. 8% given tough comps and macro weakness tells you, I think, a bit about the strength of the underlying portfolio.
We go to the front here.
Good morning. This is Simona Sarli from Bank of America. A couple of questions from my side. First of all, you mentioned the new Trended Data opportunity in the U.K. Is there a chance that you could try to quantify? Should we assume something quite similar to what you already have in the U.S.? First question. Second question, probably if you can comment on the margin in the medium term for B2B and B2C. Would you think it's sustainable in the medium term, especially considering that you have experienced a very good progression in the H1 in the B2C segment? Third question is an update on the acquisition of ClearScore. Is there anything you can say, and if 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. ClearScore, relatively easy because we don't have any additional updates. We're still in the CMA process. Phase II will complete over the next few weeks. We'll get their preliminary findings, and then we'll find out where we move from there. That's all we can say on that. On Trended Data in the U.K., well, that's a relatively new product. 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. I think it's too early for us to be able to give you a quantum around that. A lot of excitement, but early stages. On the medium-term outlook, Lloyd, do you want to say?
Yeah, I think, Simona, you mentioned the progress in the first half on 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 taper out. I think this year we said margin would progress, and that's unchanged. I think as we look out, the consumer business has the potential, as we've said, to generate good margins in the 20%-25% range. Obviously, in any individual year, it depends on how you're investing for growth. The B2B business, you've seen some of the operating leverage we can produce. Equally, we need to invest. You've seen some of the benefits that we're getting in our growth rate from the investments we've made in the previous year.
We should be able to deliver operating leverage, but obviously, we're going to be investing alongside that.
If I may, just a very quick follow-up.
Very quickly.
Yes.
If you can just restrict the questions to three per person, please.
If I understand, in B2B, the margin progression is mostly operating leverage. In the B2C will be just coming from, obviously, going back to growth also in the U.K.
Yeah. In the year, the B2B margin reflects operating leverage and investment. You've seen in the U.K. we've been investing pretty heavily. 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. In the time, you have a question maybe on having across. Thank you.
Thank you. Yeah. I will stick to two questions. The first one is on M&A. You showed a nice table now about your investments, also you commented that each of these investments is complemented with commercial deals. Just so we understand or say how you approach M&A is, when you do M&A, is like getting a commercial agreement also a deal breaker, i.e., every time you get some M&A, effectively, you're also able to generate some additional business for you? That's the first question. Secondly is about going back to, I think, slide five, about you mentioned the multibillion-dollar opportunities in many verticals. Multibillion dollars is a big figure. Is that basically in your area already of expertise?
When you talk about multibillion, that includes also, say, new areas where effectively you don't yet have a product which now potentially in a three, five-year view you might enter so to say. How much is actually you already have a product needs a bit of tweak, and you can address it? How much is actually now we need to develop new products? Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. Let's deal with the M&A one. The slide that I think you were looking at was specific around minority investments. 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. Secondly, 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 expertise in scoring. 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.
The minority investment is really kind of almost the other way around. If we're going to help leapfrog your business in terms of growth and capability, we want more than just the commercial agreement. We want strategic agreement, and we want to benefit from that in as many ways as we can. That allows a much closer partnership to develop with us and the company in question. Some of these opportunities 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 the slide but didn't talk about was Finicity. You probably heard FICO's results about FICO Ultra. Finicity is a really important component of that. You can see how something like that can now work into a broader agreement.
When we come to buying businesses that we want to consolidate fully, so full-blown M&A, we're very focused on the areas that we want to buy in. They're usually incredibly synergistic, where we can not only enhance our strategic and competitive position, but hopefully generate some savings either through data or other synergies. I think you're seeing 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. You're seeing the success that we're having with that. We continue to look for those opportunities absolutely to do full-blown M&A with. Some of these minority 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. It's those sort of factors that we really take into account when we look at M&A. Sorry, just remind me what your second question was.
The multibillion-dollar opportunities.
Yes, sorry.
Then you said.
Yeah. We referenced Experian One, which was the mid-tier decisioning opportunity, which is global at $2 billion. That's not guesswork. We've done extensive market research on that. In fact, we think the market is actually much bigger than that the $2 billion is 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, you can see that actually growing much bigger than that. The $2 billion is very focused on verticals and capabilities that we know we can address, the modules that we're developing are specifically designed to address them. I think if you take lead generation, we've sized that specifically today, the $2 billion opportunity in North America today. We believe it can grow to somewhere between $5 billion and $7 billion in size.
Not stuff we've made up. We've had specific market assessments done. All of them are really based on extensive research. 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 invest in sometimes in changing our sales forces to be able to address new particular verticals or even product sets. There's a lot to play for, and really that's where you're seeing our investment going behind these new propositions. Of course, we're not going to get them all right. Some of them will, I'm confident we'll get enough of them right, but sometimes we're not going to get them right. Does that answer your question?
Yeah. Thank you.
Okay. Just go up to the front here.
Good morning. It's Rory Mackenzie from UBS. Two on consumer, please. Within that area, can you talk about lead generation and just pull together across the U.S., U.K., 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? Then secondly, on the U.K., can you talk about the competitive landscape, in particular with the shift in ownership of one of the players in that market, please?
Lloyd, do you want to talk about the revenues?
Sure.
I can come back.
Overall, we said this year, if you take the three geographies, we'd expect Lead Gen revenue to be a little over $45 million. The majority of that is in the U.S. and the U.K. growing very strongly. Take that add on identity, and we're over $100 million for the year as a whole. Obviously, the run rate as we exit the fourth quarter will be higher than that given the very strong growth we've got. We've very much developed the platform that we're using in conjunction across the three businesses. 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. This is a competitive marketplace. It always has been, and we expect it to be going forward. I think you're referring to Credit Karma's purchase of Noddle. We expected that to happen once TU bought Callcredit. It doesn't really change our perspective 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 support many players. 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. It's beneficial to consumers, putting these capabilities in their hands, building engaging propositions.
If we can do that successfully, we will be successful. Back to Andy.
Hi, it's Andrew Grobler from Credit Suisse. Can I ask a slightly broader question? You were talking about your business in Asia-Pacific that you bought with alternative data assets. I just wondered what your view was of bureaus of scores built using alternative data assets versus traditional in terms of the efficacy 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?
Okay. I think this is really focused on regulation in every market. 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. 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 scorable. In Asia-Pacific in particular, the most instructive form of data is telco data which we have access through a business that we call Experian MicroAnalytics, where we've developed scoring systems based on consumers that engage in prepaid mobile phone contracts.
We provide those services back into the big telcos. That specific example is linking data like that and the available data to the financial system to build a more comprehensive picture. I think the answer is that it's not one data source. It's actually multiple data sources coming together to create an asset, which then creates a scorable population set. Over time in these marketplaces, regulation will develop, and it will be more specific about what data can be used for what. We expect actually that the regulations that are already evolved in the U.K. and the U.S. will become more prevalent over time. I think that's going to lead, in some cases, to some information sets not being available for use that are today.
I think 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 can be used for what and a tight regulatory regime around it. Kerry, you want to add anything to that?
Yeah, I'd add 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 debts, bar none. There is no greater predictor out there than what a person has historically done in terms of paying their debts. In markets where a credit bureau is established, that is the best source of truth in terms of what the person will do in the future or a small business. In these alternative markets that are developing, I think they will actually lead to 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 in those markets.
They'll need to have visibility. 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 having better visibility into the lending processes, and that'll push them for doing things like requiring and mandating that the banks share the data so that they can have a single source of truth and monitor the credit worthiness and the credit trends in that particular market. It's not going to 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. I see it more as an opportunity for our industry and our business than a threat.
Thank you.
Okay. If we could just go next, then we'll take a question on the line in a second.
Thanks very much. 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 are very high in North America, mortgage rates going up. What's happening to refi activity and how the model you've built now is interest rate sensitive or not compared to where we were in 2006, 2007? Then maybe if you could just help us explain the difference in the EBITDA margin and the EBITA margin because your depreciation is obviously down on where we were four years ago now. 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. Kerry, do you want to comment on.
Yeah.
interest rates in the U.S. market?
Yeah. Interest rates still are historically fairly low in the U.S. market. Mortgages maybe are around 4.5% right now. Maybe they're touching to 5%. That has had some impact on what's going on, but not a great impact in terms of the velocity of Middle America mortgages. The high-end mortgages have certainly taken a hit because interest rates have gone up and the tax law change. A big part of what's gone on with mortgages in the U.S. market is that a significant chunk of your interest is no longer deductible for high-income earners. That's really had a negative impact on that part of the market. In general, I wouldn't say that interest rates in the U.S. market are significantly hampering consumer lending at all at this point in time.
They're still a couple of points below, I believe, where we were in 2006 and 2007 leading into the financial crisis. I think they were more closer to 6% or 7% at that point in time.
Is that the same on cards?
Cards?
Is that the same on credit cards in the U.S.?
Credit cards don't change too much in the U.S. market.
Okay.
They're typically capped maybe at 18%. They could have a floating rate, but typically they 18% or 23% cap on the max interest rate. Beyond that, the interest rate on credit cards are not a driver for consumers typically on whether or not they're borrowing on their credit cards. There's other factors.
Okay. Thank you.
On EBIT versus EBITDA margin, two things to highlight. The first is the FX effect at an EBITDA level is different. Brazil is a higher margin business. Obviously, we've had the FX effect hitting Brazil this last year, and depreciation is higher in Brazil, so you see a bigger FX effect. Also the step-up we had in our capital the last 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 of products really get underway over the next few years. Those are the things that really explain it this time.
Okay. Going forward, we should expect a narrowing of the EBITDA to EBIT ex FX.
Yeah, I guess it really depends on where our growth rate goes, but you'll certainly see the growth in the depreciation charge as we see some of the investment come through in the depreciation line.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. I think we're going to go to a question on the line, and then we'll come back. Do we have a question on the line?
Good morning. Yeah, good morning. This is Brett from Stephens. Can you all hear me okay?
Yeah, we can. Thank you. Morning, Brett.
Great. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two quick ones. First, on mortgage as 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? That's question number one. Question number two is a little bit bigger picture. You've talked a lot about on CreditMatcher and Text for Credit and things like that, of pre-populating 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 ROI for signing folks up for particular credit products? Thanks again.
Do you want to deal with the mortgage?
Yeah. Mortgage, Brett, is about 3% of the group. If you look within, obviously, we have the very strong growth from the introduction of the Trended Data product. Out with that, we saw volumes down mid-single digit. A lot of the growth really coming from the Trended Data product.
Yeah. Brett, I think 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've talked to you about, things like eligibility, things like better matching of products and services to consumers. 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. 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 left
Hi, good morning. It's Giasone Salati from Macquarie. I have three questions, please. First, Lloyd, do we have to think about a very small 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 monetization of Brazil as a theme. Does that mean that you feel like you've gone a little bit, you're ahead of time in terms of investment?
Monetization in Brazil?
In Brazil, yes. Does that mean because we were expecting positive data and so on and so forth, you feel like you are ahead of where you would want to be in terms of investments there, you can step back a little bit maybe? Last one, really more generally. It seems like Experian is positioned to become nearly a consumer data gateway, right? You can trust it. 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 level of data owner, and does that have any impact on your margins longer term, as in you rely less on third-party, on banks to provide you your core data?
Okay.
Does that really change?
Okay. Let's come back to the question on, direct at Lloyd. A couple points. On monetization Brazil, I think we're pleased with the progress. Our initial focus was to build an audience at scale. A lot of that audience was focused on essentially people who were in the negative file, so not necessarily sort of the richest seam 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. I think we're pleased with progress. I think we are a bit ahead of where we expected, but the revenues are still modest. We do expect them to scale. We have ambitions for that to be sizable.
We need to continue to see that evolve next year and beyond to declare a complete victory on that. Early signs are encouraging. Your second question on the first level of data, I think that you need to think of this more as being able to look at data sources from a variety of different sources. So, the ability to access data, not just from third-party contributions, but also from consumer-contributed data, I think is hugely important. Small demonstration we gave you on Experian Financial Profile sort of gives you a hint that there's actually some very interesting opportunities with things like income verification. The example we've given 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.
It was quite significant, enough for it to make some difference on the B2B side. All these signs are quite encouraging. We think it's a viable and very useful strategy. I don't think it will ever replace, because the scale and network effect and sizeability of the data contribution we have from our partners all over the world is huge. 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.
On IFRS 15, when we outlined at the end of last year, on average for our portfolio of products, we expect revenues to be recognized a little bit later under IFRS 15, that shouldn't affect our growth rates. It's down, last year, we restated down a little bit, the growth rate into this year and this year into next year shouldn't really be affected by IFRS 15.
Thank you.
Okay, we got time for another question, we'll call it a day.
Hi. Morning. Just one question. Back on data, please, can you talk about your compliance with GDPR in the markets that it affects, and particularly how you go about putting up Chinese walls between the different parts of your business and how data is able to be used within those? I'm specifically talking about the Privacy International story from this week. Thanks.
Yeah. Well, obviously, this is a huge focus for us. What I would say is that GDPR formalizes some of the procedures that we've been following in our business for a long time. 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. I think what we're, as I referenced earlier on, you're getting into a world where there's more focus on the compliant use of data. We've said many times that this is actually something which is playing into Experian's strengths. We have long been a trust 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 adapt and amend to that, but none of that really has had a significant impact on our internal procedures because of what we do, sort of what we've developed over a number of years. I think we feel very comfortable with all of our internal procedures. I think we'll continue to see more regulation come at us, I think, in the future, but none of which I think will be difficult for us to comply with or cope with. Kerry, do you want to add anything to that?
No, I think that's good. I 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 the 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 regard to how we handle the data and the compliance and the safeguards that we put around it. We feel good about where we're at.
Okay. Thank you. Okay, I think we'll bring it to a halt there. Thank you everybody for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking to you again in May.