Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Experian's preliminary results for the year ended 31st March 2025 webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to star one and one on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw a question, please press one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Mr. Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. Hello, everybody, and welcome to our FY 2025 results presentation. I'm joined today by Lloyd, who will run through the financials after my initial overview, and then we'll open up for Q&A. FY 2025 was a very good year for us, and we ended the year well. We delivered on our full-year guidance and on our medium-term framework. 7% organic revenue growth is a very good result in a year of relatively subdued macro. We also had excellent margin delivery above our target, and cash conversion was also very strong. FY 2025 was also a year of very good strategic progress across the business with continued organic investment in new products, a busy year for M&A, and continued investment in our cloud transformation, which remains on track. All of this sets us up to sustain our performance into FY 2026 and beyond.
Now, speaking of FY 2026, it has started very well, and we've not seen any material change in our operating environment or any direct impact from market volatility. Of course, it is very early in our financial year, and we continue to watch the economic situation carefully, but we are confident we can navigate through multiple scenarios given our long track record of growth and resilience. We are also very well positioned to seize opportunities as they arise, given the scale of our market positions and the strength of our balance sheet. We ended FY 2025 well with Q4 organic revenue growth of 7% and 7% for the year. When the data breach headwind is excluded, Q4 growth was 9%, and FY 2025 was 8%.
As Lloyd's slides will show, margin delivery was excellent, up 90 basis points organically, 70 basis points at constant rates, and up 50 basis points when FX is factored in. Margin expansion is largely the result of consumer services operating leverage and enhanced efficiency while sustaining investment in the business. Benchmark EPS and dividend per share rose by 8% and 7% respectively, and our cash conversion was very strong at 97%. We' ve also generated consistently high returns on capital, with ROCE of around 17%, and our net debt to EBITDA is below our target debt range. One of the main strategic highlights of the year is that we have now passed 200 million free consumer members globally, a significant achievement and milestone. Consumer services revenue growth of 7% was 12% when data breaches excluded, and it accelerated as the year progressed.
It was also a good year for B2B, with 6% organic revenue growth against a subdued credit market backdrop. We continue to introduce new products, win new clients, expand our revenue share from existing clients, and increase market opportunity in new areas. Our large verticals performed really well, with a special call-out to health, which had record client bookings. Whilst a busy year for M&A, we deployed over $1.6 billion in acquisitions when you include the ClearSale acquisition, and we're very pleased with the performance so far and confident in the outlook. There are quite a few operational highlights, the main one being that we're on track with our cloud technology transformation, with dual-run costs set to peak in FY 2026 and trend down from FY 2027. We also expect to capitalize on a range of productivity measures, as well as to realize acquisition cost synergies.
Collectively, we expect these measures to underpin our ability to invest while also driving further margin uplift. Other highlights include the positive progress in client NPS metrics, the external recognition we've had for our products broadly, but specifically also for our progress on GenAI products. These have already enhanced many of our existing products and have provided new opportunities to improve productivity. Perhaps the award I'm most proud of is our number 14 ranking in the world's best places to work survey, which highlights the strength of our culture, employee brand, and our ability to attract and retain top talent. Looking at the regions in more detail, in North America, we ended the year with strong momentum, with Q4 growth of 10% to give 8% organic revenue growth for the year.
B2B closed the year strongly, driven by strength in core CI/BI across core credit profiles, Ascend and Clarity, and strong mortgage revenue. We introduced new products such as Cash Flow Analytics, BNPL data, and new modules to the Ascend platform. The U.S. credit backdrop last year was subdued, with activity levels generally below pre-pandemic levels, but we continue to see good growth in product and new business performance. The year has started well and has yet not seen much change in behavior from clients as they assess the U.S. economic situation. Across our verticals, Health delivered a year of record sales bookings and implementations, which will underpin growth into FY 2026. Also delivered outstanding performance, and we expect the breadth of our portfolio and pricing to sustain that good performance.
In targeting, the repositioning work we've done, which means more of our growth now arises in the digital advertising industry, which the Audigent acquisition will help to expand. In consumer services, we continue to leverage our approximately 80 million membership into new growth spaces. The headline 5% growth rate was 11% excluding data breach, and it accelerated as the year progressed. Paid enrollment progress has been strong on the back of new features. It provides a solid base to help consumers find savings and manage their credit, which is a traditionally countercyclical activity. Our credit marketplace has seen some recovery, and insurance revenue more than doubled. We continue to evolve our insurance offer, and we recently signed a new carrier agreement to extend further into home insurance. Latin America organic growth was 6% for the year.
The main driver in Brazil was consumer services, supported by free membership growth of 96 million. In B2B, the weaker macro backdrop and uncertainty surrounding Brazil's fiscal policy position suppressed B2B growth. We continue to evolve our business strategy, adding new products and selling more solutions comprising data, analytics, and software, and we're encouraged by the strength of our new business and product pipeline. We've introduced new scores, enriched our data with income and consumer permission sources, and we continue to leverage the Ascend platform. Now with ClearSale, we have a much larger data set to combine fraud and credit assets and bring very differentiated offers to our clients. Strength in consumer services reflects membership growth and higher membership engagement across more propositions.
It was a record year for Limpa Nome, and with 75 million consumers in Brazil and today in some form of delinquency, we are well placed to help people to resolve their debts through the platform as they navigate Brazil's high interest rate environment. Marketplace, subscriptions, and digital wallet were all positive contributors. The U.K. and Ireland was up 1% for the year organically, with an improving consumer services trend compensating for more modest B2B revenue progress against a subdued market backdrop. In B2B, we're pleased with progress in new business. A growing number of clients have now gone live on the Ascend platform, including several major retail banks.
While we have more work to do to drive product adoption, we're confident that we will see widespread adoption of Ascend as a default analytic sandbox solution across the U.K. market, and that will further strengthen our market position and provide us with new growth opportunities. U.K. consumer services have made very good progress. We've stepped up the rate of new product delivery and introduced more personalized journeys for members. Our marketplace lender panel is also now much stronger as we've created more opportunities for lenders to extend credit efficiently via the Activate platform, and this has helped us to outperform the overall credit market. India and Asia-Pacific performed consistently well across this year. Growth was evenly balanced and broad-based across our markets, and importantly, revenue for new product introductions is becoming a more meaningful growth driver. The Ilion access integration is going well.
It's ahead of our buy plan, and we're seeing really strong synergy execution. Now, reflecting on our progress over a longer period of time, our revenue growth has now averaged 8% organic since FY 2020, with good operating leverage into EBIT, cash flow, and EPS performance. When you consider that this too includes a six-year period where we had a pandemic, a major war in Europe, an unprecedented rationing of interest rates globally, and followed by a fairly significant credit downturn. We have good confidence in the outlook for the business irrespective of the macro environment. Just as a reminder, if we go even further back to the financial crisis, we also grew our business in that period too. Our strategy has been to position our business to take advantage of growth opportunities, enabling us to outperform underlying credit conditions.
Experian is a fundamentally changed business from what it was even 10 years ago and a very different business since the global financial crisis. Today, we do many more things. Our health, automotive, and targeting businesses, for example, combined are now almost equal in size to our North America CI business. Consumer services addresses a much greater TAM than it did in the past and has been fundamentally transformed. We are now one of the world's largest consumer financial platforms with trusted relationships with consumers at scale. We will continue to become even more relevant to consumers' lives, entering into new areas to provide more ways for people to instantly borrow, save, protect, and spend. We have done this through consistent application of our strategic framework, which should by now be all very familiar to you.
It's a constant for us, and it's the lens through which we consider all investments in our business. I want to comment now in more detail on some of the recent strategic accomplishments, starting with B2B financial services, where product and platform momentum is building, and we've introduced some significant new products. As our markets evolve, the requirement for continued improvements in process drives opportunity, and we see this in demand for better data, new data, and better solutions. We also see demand for a more holistic view of risk across credit underwriting, fraud, and compliance risk. It's an accelerating trend which helps us drive efficiency for our clients and presents us with new growth opportunities for which we are uniquely positioned.
We are addressing these opportunities through expanding our data assets, developing new analytics, as well as the continued evolution, expansion, and expansion of platforms like the Ascend technology platform. Cash flow analytics is a good example, which can provide a predictive uplift by up to 25% when combined with pure data and give a more comprehensive view of risk. We are also positioned to be the leader in consumer contributed data. Verification records continue to expand in North America, where we also continue to make very good progress adding new client logos. Ascend platform adoption continues to increase. Ascend Sandbox is best in class for model development, and it has very strong momentum with a record year for signings in North America and a large number of anchor tenants going live in the U.K.
We've now developed new modules which are now proof of concept to help clients take full advantage of the breadth of our capability in an easy-to-consume and seamless way. Fraud is a large market opportunity, and we took important steps this year to extend our suite of products. We did this through homegrown capabilities like Fraud Sandbox and by acquiring assets like NeuroID, which we've since incorporated onto the Ascend platform. Our ambition is to have the best fraud assets delivered through the Ascend platform to help us expand across the client lifecycle, and we're making good progress towards this. Some of our best growth opportunities are in our verticals, which now account for around 21% of our revenue. In Health, Wave, now called Patient Access Curator, has been a great addition to our product suite, which has driven greater client wallet share.
We've also invested in opportunities to extend our collection suite, which is critical to the financial viability of healthcare providers. Our auto business addresses a broad range of industry needs, which include credit, marketing, and fraud. It has a good track record of resilience because of this diversity. For example, our marketing solutions, which help clients stimulate the market when vehicle sales are slow, was one of our fastest growth drivers last year, and demands for vehicle history reports rise when the secondhand car market is strong. In targeting, our business has become progressively more digital. This expands the way advertisers can reach target audiences, the acquisition of Audigent to expand this platform.
While historically, we have had strong relationships with the buy side of the digital ad industry, Audigent's business is more focused on the supply side, and this is a side of the industry that supplies the ad industry and ad inventory, and therefore is a very complementary asset, positioning Experian to be a leader in identity activation technology. Consumer services has become one of our core growth engines. We've expanded membership, built engagement, introduced new offers, and more personalized experiences. In North America, we put more value into premium services, helping members to save money, which drives higher premium enrollment rates. At the same time, we've introduced highly personalized recommendations and more relevant product experiences to drive loyalty and build engagement. Experian Activate has been a key accelerant in both the U.S. and the U.K. credit marketplaces.
We've onboarded more lending partners to our panels through Activate, who use it to drive up loan approval rates. We've also introduced consumer-facing propositions like No Ding Decline in the U.S. and a much improved experience for our U.K. members. Our insurance marketplace continues to make very good progress. Do it for me solutions find policies for our members through rate monitoring. I mentioned that we're now expanding further into home insurance, the next logical step for our insurance marketplace. We're also evaluating new opportunities that we can leverage where we can leverage our scaled audiences into. In Brazil, we've started to explore new opportunities in the insurance market focused initially on low-cost insurance. Strategic investments like these continue to drive consumer services forward, and we're actively exploring new horizons to further extend our opportunity.
Now, we've achieved this at the same time as we've greatly enhanced Consumer Services EBIT margins. We also completed several acquisitions in FY 2025, all of which are excellent strategic fits. Three of the larger acquisitions are shown here, and all of them have got off to a very good start. Ilion transforms our position in Australia and New Zealand by combining the number two and number three consumer bureaus and gives us a wider and very complementary product footprint. We're very pleased with progress in the first six months, and we're on track to realize material synergies. Audigent is a business we partnered with and held a minority stake in before we acquired it in December 2024. It continues our journey into digital marketing and ad tech, which we view as a foundational capability as it spans really the entirety of our client base.
Audigent builds on our industry-leading data assets, our modeling capabilities, and on the TAPAD acquisition, and it provides us with access to context-based audiences through over 300 publisher integrations. As I mentioned, this strengthens our relationship on the supply side of the digital ad industry, and it further rounds out our portfolio. ClearSale is a highly complementary acquisition for Serasa, and it gives us industry-leading fraud capabilities. It is a scaled and comprehensive data asset, which, combined with our existing data assets and capabilities, gives us unsurpassed portfolio breadth in Brazil. We are very excited about the opportunity to combine this with credit risk to create superior offers. In summary, we have made very strong strategic progress and will continue in this direction where more of our revenue is generated from products, from new products now at around $1.8 billion.
We drive deeper adoption of Ascend and our other integrated platforms where clients can consume multiple solutions across software analytics, fraud, as well as data. We access a greater set of opportunities across high-growth vertical segments, and we deepen our engagement with a large installed base of consumer members across a wider set of consumer offers. With that, let me turn to Lloyd for the financial overview.
Thanks, Brian, and morning, everyone. As you have seen, we delivered another strong performance in FY 2025 with organic revenue growth in line with our growth framework and strong margin expansion. For the full year, total revenue at constant currency grew by 8%, of which 7% was organic. Benchmark EBIT from ongoing activities grew 11% at constant rates and 8% at actual rates. EBIT growth converted well into EPS growth of 11% at constant rates and 8% at actual rates.
Operating cash flow was over $2 billion with 97% conversion. We invested $1.9 billion organically and inorganically to grow and strategically enhance the business. On our growing capital base, we continue to generate very high returns on capital employed of around 17% post-tax for the year. We have announced a full-year dividend of $0.625 per share, up 7% on the prior year. Finally, we remain strongly financed with our net debt to EBITDA leverage at 1.8 times, below our 2-2.5 times target range. Over the past five years, despite market backdrops, we have delivered consistently strong results, underlining the increasing strength and breadth of our portfolio and our strategic progress across our growth initiatives. Since FY 2020, we have grown revenue at an 8% compound annual growth rate. Benchmark EBIT grew 9% compound over this period, with margins expanding by 130 basis points in aggregate.
We converted this to a 9% compound growth in benchmark earnings per share, and we've been very cash generative, growing at an 11% compound rate to over $2 billion. Since FY 2020, we've therefore expanded EPS by around 50% and operating cash flow by over 65%. Looking at this performance through a segmental lens, on the left, you can see that we've scaled our consumer business considerably since FY 2020, with revenue nearly doubling. As we've engaged our growing member base with an increasing breadth of product to help them navigate their financial lives, our membership revenue has grown at a 9% compound rate, and marketplace has grown at over 30% to over $2 billion for the consumer segment in aggregate.
On the right of the chart, you can see how this scaling has led to a 550 basis points margin uplift to 27.4%, which is now broadly in line with our group margin. In B2B, we've grown consistently over this period, adding $1.5 billion in revenue over five years. Despite the effects of a softer lending environment over the last two years, our financial services segment has grown consistently and well with a 6% compound growth since FY 2020. At the same time, our growth verticals of health, automotive, targeting, and data quality have performed very well, with 8% compound growth to over $1.5 billion in revenue. Importantly, these verticals are largely uncorrelated with the underlying credit market and have scaled to be margin accretive to the group. On the right, you can see we generated a strong 31% and consistent EBIT margin across these businesses.
This consistent margin is after the investments we've made in our technology transformation, the scaling of our verifications and Ascend business, and of course, the recent impact of the softer lending environment. As our business scales, as dual-run costs abate, and at some point we see broad-based lending recovery, we would expect greater financial flexibility for investment and growth. Looking now at more recent trends, as you've heard from Brian, we delivered consistent growth through the year with a diversification and resilience of our portfolio offsetting a still subdued lending environment. Organic growth in Q4 improved to 7% in our traditionally strong finish to the year, supported by broad-based strengthening in North America B2B and consumer services offsetting modestly lower than expected Latin America revenue. Total revenue growth in Q4 was 10% following the contribution from our acquisitions.
Looking at organic revenue growth across the segments, on the left-hand chart, you can see our quarterly trend in B2B, where we saw good momentum across recent quarters with a traditionally strong finish to the year, with growth increasing from 6% in Q3 to 8% in Q4. North America was the key driver, with growth in the core bureau improving. As expected, we also saw a step up in North America verticals of health, automotive, and targeting. On the right-hand side, you can see our consumer services segment trends in total and excluding our data breach business. As we've mentioned in FY 2024 and early FY 2025, we secured several large one-off data breach contracts following elevated levels of breach activity in the market. As you can see, excluding data breach, underlying growth firmed through the first three quarters of the year and remained strong in Q4.
Turning now to FY 2024, Q4 regional growth trends. North America grew 10% organically in Q4, with B2B growing 12%. Within B2B, the bureau delivered mid-teens growth, and excluding mortgage profile revenue grew 8% in the quarter. Our Ascend modules continued to perform very well, particularly Ascend Marketing. Clarity Services also maintained recent double-digit growth. Overall lending continued to be subdued and was similar to recent quarters. Mortgage profile revenue grew 66% on volumes that were down modestly. Automotive accelerated to 16%, where new business wins and expected pricing actions helped deliver strong growth. Targeting strengthened in Q4 to growing 5% as our digital identity and activation offerings continued to scale. Health growth accelerated to 12%, benefiting from good cross-sell progress in areas such as patient access, coverage discovery, and digital front door.
Our successful Wave acquisition that Brian mentioned has moved into the organic base and continues to perform well. Consumer services grew 5% in Q4, similar to recent quarters. Data breach was a headwind to growth as we lapped contracts in the prior year. Excluding this impact, growth was 14%. Subscription grew high single digits as new financial health features contributed to higher enrollments. Marketplace maintained recent double-digit growth as auto insurance continued to grow very strongly. In the credit marketplace, the loans vertical did well, and credit cards returned to growth. Credit cards benefited in the quarter from the No Ding Decline launch that Brian mentioned and positive partner supply movements. Organic growth in Latin America was 3% in Q4. In Brazil, continued macro uncertainty tempered some client activity, and bureau revenue growth was in line with Q3 at 1%.
Targeting revenue reflected a one-off client revenue received in the prior period. Consumer services was up 17%, with broad-based growth across our propositions. Limpa Nome performed well with good conversion rates. Our payments capabilities benefited from increased volumes and good client acquisition. Our marketplace was strong as we made strides to optimize the customer journey in our ecosystem. The U.K. and Ireland was consistent through the half, with one-half organic revenue growth. Bureau growth was in line with our performance in Q3. We are progressing with our strategic innovations, though a still subdued credit environment moderated growth. We signed numerous Ascend Sandbox trial contracts and are progressing well towards client conversions. Targeting in Automotive was down 9% in the quarter, reflecting the specific client actions to insource some activity we mentioned in previous quarters.
Decisioning was up 2%, and we had good growth in Experian Data Quality driven by our innovative Aperture Data Studio and our single data quality management platform. Consumer services grew 6%, maintaining recent strength. Marketplace continued its recent good growth. Our leading Activate platform drove strength in our lender panel and continued to contribute to good conversion rates. Subscription revenue grew modestly, driven by increasing enrollments. In EMEA and Asia-Pacific, growth for the quarter was 8%, consistent with the performance in Q3, following strong decisioning growth in Australia, New Zealand, and Southern Europe, as well as good growth across the bureau. Turning now to EBIT margin, where we delivered 90 basis points of organic constant currency margin expansion ahead of our guidance. As you'll recall, we communicated that our dual-run costs related to our cloud transition are peaking in FY 2025 and FY 2026.
Despite this headwind, we made strong progress. Our scaling consumer platform and verticals, along with early benefits from our cloud program, drove margin outperformance for the year. Consumer services business continues to drive operating leverage as we further engage our scaled member base with an expanded product suite. B2B margin was largely stable, with good underlying operating leverage offset by investments in areas such as our cloud transformation, verifications, and fraud propositions. For the year, there was a 20 basis point dilutive impact from acquisitions, along with a 20 basis point headwind from foreign exchange. We therefore delivered 50 basis points of margin expansion at actual rates. At a regional level, margins in North America, the U.K. and Ireland, and EMEA and Asia-Pacific contributed to group margin, whilst Latin America margins reflected currency changes and acquisitions.
Onto benchmark earnings per share, where we delivered double-digit growth of 11% at constant FX and 8% at actual rates. EBIT grew 11% at constant currency, following good revenue growth and 70 basis points of EBIT margin expansion at constant rates. Higher acquisition-driven interest expense was offset by a modestly lower tax rate relative to last year. This translated to an 11% EPS growth at constant currency and 8% at actual rates. Taking a look at our usual statutory reconciliation, our benchmark profit before tax grew 8% at actual FX rates, driven by the revenue performance and good margin progression. Acquisition-related expenses decreased modestly at the $37 million. There was little change in the fair value of contingent consideration on prior acquisitions. We incurred $50 million of costs in relation to our technology-enabled restriction program and recovered $11 million of costs relating to prior legal matters.
Statutory PBT before non-cash items was therefore up 6%. Amortization of acquisition intangibles increased to $211 million. Non-cash financing remeasurements were $89 million, driven by remeasurements of Brazilian intra-group funding and interest rate swaps, leaving statutory profit before tax largely flat at $1.549 million. Now taking a look at cash flow and return on capital, the left-hand chart here shows our long-term operating cash flow and conversion metrics. As you can see from the slide, we've progressively increased our operating cash flow, growing at an 11% compound rate since FY 2020. In FY 2025, we generated over $2 billion of operating cash flow at a 97% conversion rate. A key part of our growth framework is to continue to use our cash generation to invest in high return on capital growth opportunities.
On the right, you can see our disciplined use of capital, where we've significantly grown our capital base whilst delivering consistently high post-tax returns. Notwithstanding this investment, we remain below our target leverage range, giving us continued flexibility to invest in value-creating opportunities. As we discussed last year, we've significantly progressed with our cloud transformation program. The chart on the left shows the mix of our capital investment, which has materially shifted from infrastructure to development as our cloud program has progressed and is driving widespread innovation across our business. Our CapEx to sales ratio has reduced from 9.5% to 8.7% of revenue. As our cloud transition completes and we continue to gain scale benefits, we expect this to trend to 7% of revenue. Last year, we outlined that in our largest North American and Brazilian business, we were around 50% processing in the cloud.
We've progressed very well this year and are now around 70% and well on the way to our expected position of over 85% by this time next year. In the U.K. and Ireland, EMEA and Asia-Pacific, progress is continuing well and will approach 50% in the cloud by this time next year. As we approach the latter stages of the program, we expect to redirect activity into innovation and benefit from reduced dual-run costs and lower change-related capital investment. On now to acquisitions. As you've heard from Brian, we made a number of strategic acquisitions during the year, spending over $1.2 billion in support of our key priorities. Following the end of the year, we completed the previously announced ClearSale acquisition. We expect the aggregate impact of the acquisitions completed in FY 2025, along with ClearSale, to contribute 3% to revenue growth in FY 2026.
On that note, onto our modeling considerations for the year ahead. These relate to our results from ongoing activities. As previously mentioned, we expect 6% to 8% organic revenue growth for the full year and a 3% contribution from completed acquisitions. Whilst we're mindful of the uncertain outlook of the global economy, we've built a diversified and very resilient portfolio, which has consistently demonstrated that and grown through different economic cycles and macro effects. We expect revenue growth to continue to come with good margin progression of 30 to 50 basis points at constant currency, including the effects of completed acquisitions. Based on recent FX rates, we expect FX to be neutral to both revenue and EBIT growth.
We expect net interest for the year to be around $190 million, which reflects incremental debt associated with the acquisitions and higher rates as some of our interest fixing expire. This represents a net interest cost on net debt of around 3.7% and continues to benefit from our historic rate fixing. The benchmark tax rate is expected to be around 26%. The weighted average number of shares is expected to remain 914 million for the year. CapEx is expected to be around 8% to 9% of revenue. We expect cash flow conversion to be over 90% for the year ahead. We have announced a share buyback program of up to $200 million to be completed for the year as a whole.
Finally, as we've discussed over the last couple of years, we've been making excellent progress with our Ascend Technology platform and with bundling our unique breadth of services for clients. With that success, the data and decisioning service lines no longer represent how we go to market. Our data, software, fraud, and analytics propositions are increasingly integrated into our Ascend Technology platform. Going forward, we'll therefore now report these together in a single financial services line. In addition, as I mentioned earlier, our automotive, health, and marketing services businesses continue to scale very well, and these will be reported together as our vertical service line. We'll report against these service lines from Q1 FY 2026 and provide comparative information to enable models to be updated. We'll also, of course, continue to provide narrative on growth on service lines within these, such as membership, marketplace, et cetera.
With that, I'll hand you back to Brian for some closing comments.
Great. Thanks, Lloyd. In closing, we've ended the year very strongly with good momentum. We delivered very well in FY 2025 on revenue, EBIT, and we deployed capital to sustain and build on our strategic progress. We've also delivered on the medium-term framework we laid out last year, and our confidence in this will grow further as we execute on our technology transformation program. For FY 2026, we've had a good start to the year, and while there is some broader macro uncertainty around, we are on track for another year of solid growth. With that, I'm now going to hand back to the operator for your questions. Operator, over to you. Thank you.
Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for a name to be announced. To withdraw a question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Now we are going to take our first question, and this comes from the line of Ryan Flight from Jefferies. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Good morning all. Ryan Flight from Jefferies here, just three from me if I may. First one, pretty broad on North America B2C. I wondered if you could give us a guide on the data breach comps going into next year, and with that, perhaps some guidance on the appetite of lenders in the credit marketplace and an update on the run rate of insurance.
Number two question, Latin B2B has obviously had a bit of an up-and-down year with a little bit of softness in Q4. I wondered if you could give us some more color there and perhaps the outlook going into Q1, Q2 next year. And then final question on ANZ post the Ilion acquisition. I wondered if you could guide us on how we think about growth and margin going forward, please.
Sure. A lot of growth and margin questions there in terms of color. Lloyd, do you want to start?
Y eah, sure. Morning, Ryan. If you go to the slide I presented on consumer, you can see the effects of the data breach drag. Q1, fairly similar drag to Q4. If you think about the outlook for first-quarter growth, I think we're likely to start the year pretty similar to where we ended it.
Around 7%, the middle of the range, about 9% excluding data breach. The data breach drag obviously reduces sequentially then in Q2 onwards. In terms of the marketplace, insurance marketplace continues strong. We said we thought we'd finish the year with annualized quarterly run rate of about $100 million, and we did. We did $25 million of revenue in Q4. Really great progress there in opening up that insurance opportunity. In credit marketplace, I mentioned in my comments that we saw the credit card marketplace actually return to growth in the quarter. Loans have been in growth for a number of quarters, but we saw the credit card marketplace return to growth, which is, I think, an important step. I think overall, the consumer growth you can see has been strong.
As we look out, I think probably membership growth is maybe a little lighter in the year ahead than the strong growth we saw. Typically, we see that as some of the marketplace growth is stronger, but continue really good progress. If I go to Latin B2B, as I mentioned, if you stand back from the Latin macro, you're seeing a rate tightening cycle in Brazil. The interest rate selling rate was risen last week. That is really reflective in the core bureau. It is overall stable from Q3 into Q4. It was really volatility in some of our newer verticals like agri and our banking as a service vertical that drove some of the volatility in Q4. We clearly enter some easier comps into the new year.
I think Brazil improves from here, but we're probably in a mid to high single digit given the macro in Brazil rather than double digit. I think we'll need to see the economy improve before we get back to those kind of higher levels of growth. In ANZ, the Ilion acquisition is going very well. We've been really pleased with that acquisition and the team that have joined us and really well progressed with a lot of the integration activities, a lot of technology integration there that we've been working on. You will see sequentially the effect of that on the EMEA Asia-Pacific margin as we go through the next couple of years. Good progress expected on the EMEA Asia-Pacific margin.
Thank you.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question.
The question comes from the line of Simona Sarli from Bank of America. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yes, good morning and thanks for taking my question. First of all, it's regarding your guidance for FY 2026 organic revenue growth. Can you please provide more color on the underlying assumptions for the bottom and top end of your guided range? Also, considering, as you also mentioned, that the headwinds from data breach solutions analyze at the end of H1, should we assume potentially an acceleration of organic growth in H2, assuming that all else stays equal? Another question is on the marketplace, specifically if you can talk about the growth expectations for 2026 and also provide more color on marketplace, specifically for North America. Thank you.
All right. Hi, Simona . Just, I suppose, a bit of overall color on FY 2026, We're at the start of the year
There's a long way to go. We always start out with a range. I think we were very clear in the comments that we've started this year well, but obviously, we're only a month into it. There is a bit more uncertainty around, no surprise, given everything that's been happening. A bit more difficult kind of to predict what the sort of back end of the year might look like. I think we haven't assumed that there's going to be any sort of significant change in the operating environment. By that, we mean it's a relatively stable environment. We haven't seen any notable change in behavior from clients. I think everybody is looking, watching, waiting, but no deterioration. I think that's sort of fed into our performance. We're not expecting a sort of very strong recovery.
We're not expecting a sort of very strong deterioration either. It's a sort of stable backdrop that we assume going into it. There will obviously be some lines of business that will improve. You mentioned data breach will lap some easier comps with that as well. We also have some very high growth rates in some of the business lines, which I think at this stage in the year, a little difficult to forecast out for a longer period of time. I'll let Lloyd come back on the FY 2026 guidance in a bit more in a second. Let me just comment on the marketplace. I think we're seeing strong growth in marketplace, actually, in FY 2025 and really across all the three marketplaces that we have for slightly different reasons. FY 2025 was a very strong year in insurance in North America. We're very pleased with that performance.
We think that that's a long-term strategic growth opportunity for us. Some of the growth rates you saw in quarters were, in some quarters, very significant. I'm not sure we'll always be able to do that every quarter, but our belief is that it will continue to be a very long-term growth opportunity for us. We certainly saw a pickup in the marketplaces in the last quarter, and we saw that really across three different markets. Brazil marketplace performed very well. Actually, that's quite interesting because I think we've had an interest rate tightening period in Brazil, yet we're starting to see the panel build. We're starting to see more utilization of that. I think that's something that we've been building for quite some time. I think when we get into a better interest rate environment, we'd expect that business to really take off.
We are very pleased with the U.K. marketplace, which is actually outperforming the underlying credit market. I think we feel good about the outlook for marketplaces in FY 2026. I think it will probably be a bit more broad-based in terms of growth than it was in FY 2025, particularly North America, which was led by insurance. I think we will have a bit more growth across all the different pieces there. Lloyd?
Yeah. I guess a couple of things, Simone. If you look at how we have finished the year and this last year overall, I think how that might develop into the year ahead, clearly, we think for the year as a whole, this coming year is going to be a bit better in Latin America than the Q4 growth rate that we finished.
On the other side, if you exclude data breach, which was the number you were pointing to, North America grew in Q4 over 12%. I do not think that is a good mid-case forecast for the year ahead overall either. You take those two together, that is really what frames how we came up with our range. Clearly, we are starting well. I think the longer that we see those trends in the business continue, I think that bodes well for the range of outcomes for the year, but there is always a range of potentials. I think probably the other thing just to say overall is, as Brian mentioned, marketplace is going well. We have clearly had very strong growth this last year on membership. Probably the North America membership number growth rate will be a little lighter in the year ahead as we lap those.
Those are all the things in the balance of the six to eight.
Thank you.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The question comes from Andrew Ripper from Jefferies. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yeah. Morning, everybody. Well done on the results. I've got three as well, if that's allowed. First of all, just want to cover restructuring. I think it was about $50 million you took this year, and you flagged $20 million-$30 million coming in FY 2026. Lloyd, if you can talk about what you expect the benefit from that to be in terms of cost out, and will that $20 million to $30 million be the last of it? That's question one.
Do you want to come and answer the rest of the questions?
Yeah.
And give us all three, and then we'll answer.
Okay. Second question, in the presentation, you flagged the improvement in consumer profitability, which I think has been about five percentage points over the last sort of five or six years. Just wondering if you can give us a flavor for the difference in profitability across the consumer business by region and a sense of where you expect profitability to go over the medium term i s there more to go for on the margin, or do you think it'll end up being a few percentage points below B2B? The final question really was just about share of wallets, particularly things like Ascend. Just wondering if you can bring to life for us where you are in that process of trying to sell more stuff to clients as a platform and bring to life how much further you think there is to go there.
Because my sense is there's a long way to go from sort of tier one banks down. Thanks. Those are the three.
Yeah. Thanks, Andrew. Lloyd, do you want to deal with the restructuring one and the consumer profitability question? I'll come back on Ascend.
Yeah, sure. As we mentioned last year, we're coming towards the end stages of the technology restructuring. All of the costs associated with the dual running of those programs and the delivery of technology change is all in our normal P&L. What you have as you shift from one technology platform to another is a skills mix to implement in terms of the workforce. We've had restructuring, which is essentially a redundancy program this year as we implement that. What you see actually is the benefit of that in the organic margin delivery of the group.
If you go back a year, we guided to 30-50 basis points each year across five years. We said that the first two years would be the toughest. What you've seen is that we've outperformed on that basis in the first year. Our guidance organically is to do the same in year two, the two toughest years. That is really showing the benefit of, A, the scale in the business, but also the benefit of the restructuring. I think in terms of the technology change, that is likely to be at the end of it. If we have opportunities to change the business to deliver better profitability performance, then of course, we will do those whenever we see them. In terms of consumer profitability, I think in any individual year, it really depends on what opportunities we are pursuing.
You stand back from it, we're only really just getting started with the opportunities to grow into the product breadth that we can help consumers. Everybody knows that as you build an audience in a consumer platform, that's quite expensive. You then get to distribute a real breadth of product to them. I'm very optimistic if you look out over the very long term for what our consumer business can do. We won't give a target end margin, but I think you can see the trajectory of the business is very positive as it's scaled.
Thanks. Sorry, Lloyd. Just as an addendum to that, I think sort of six or seven years or so ago when you sort of started up Brazil, lost money for a few years. Where are you now in terms of sort of Latin versus North American margin on the consumer side?
Yeah. We won't give individual margins, but I would say that all three of our scale businesses have very good margins. The Brazil margin is still a bit below the North America margin, but improving very rapidly as it scales. We have got a lot of innovations at breadth to bring to that audience. As I say, over the long run, that bodes well. In an individual year, of course, you have to invest. You look back four years, people might not have expected that we would open up an insurance marketplace and think about the addressable market that is available to us there. We have got lots of other ideas in our mind's eye for what we can do with this audience. I look forward to talking to you about those in the coming years.
Andrew, coming back to you on your point, your question about Ascend, I think your presumption is right. There is a long runway to go. It's been a very successful set of products recently we've introduced. You really look at the sort of the penetration of that, it's more the U.S. has seen the biggest level of success in that, particularly with Ascend Sandbox, but also Ascend Marketing. We're having a lot of traction with it in other markets, but we're still actually at very early stages. Those were the individual modules. We have further products which are coming, which we referred to, things like Ascend Ops we talked about before. Also on the regulatory front as well, we think there's a big opportunity. As we sort of migrate people onto the Ascend technology platform, that takes two formats, really.
Sort of existing clients sort of moving consumption of products away from legacy to products consumed through the Ascend technology platform. There's actually been a huge amount of work on that. That gives rise to additional upsell opportunities in a way which is much easier than it has been in the past. I think the runway is still very significant, both in some individual modules, but with respect to the overall technology platform, both in the U.S. and actually across a broader footprint geographically.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. It comes from Scott Wurtzel from Wolfe Research. Your line is open. Please ask your question. All right. Good morning, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. Just two from me here.
First one, just on the North American Bureau side, I'm wondering if you maybe observed any pull forward on the auto side of the business given the potential tariffs that are coming about in the U.S. My second question would just be on the consumer services side. I'm wondering if you can maybe share your thoughts on the cyclical sensitivity of that business. I imagine there is some countercyclical nature to consumers wanting to have more insight on their credit performance during times of macro stress. Maybe any thoughts on cyclical sensitivities that would be helpful. Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks for the question. There was a bit of pull forward in auto in our Q4, but it's not significant. The underlying performance is actually driven by good actions across the business and new product introductions and also price benefits.
While there was a little bit, I think it helped. It was a very strong quarter in Q4. We still expect auto to deliver a very good year next year. On the second question, on the countercyclicality of credit products. Yeah. I think if you look back, what we've seen is that the membership product that we have has traditionally been really strong throughout all periods, actually, if you look at the average growth rates, but stronger at times of stress. I think if you look last year, as we started to see some, there were some data breaches in the external environment. People come to us looking to help protect their identity. Also, some of the strains in the global macro really helped that business. That's why we're growing high single digit. That's our biggest business inside the consumer business in North America.
I think traditionally that has been a countercyclical piece to our business. I think the insurance vertical is strong structural growth. I don't think we see that as particularly cyclical. That's obviously growing quite materially as a share of our platform. Core financial marketplace is a bit more cyclical. Obviously, we're coming off very depressed levels. We saw the credit card marketplace move into strong double-digit growth, actually, in the quarter for the first time in a couple of years. Those are some of the moving bits.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The question comes from Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Just to go back to this guidance range of 6% to 8%, please.
I know you said you had a good start to Q1. Does that mean you're closer to the midpoint of this range for the first quarter? Just to clarify that. Second one, on the margin expansion. Clearly, you've exceeded the margin guidance for FY 2025 despite the drag from FX and M&A. How do you see the puts and takes from organic and M&A contribution to margins in FY 2026? And maybe related to that, I think in the B2B slide, the margins in this business have been falling a little bit for the last few years. Is it just a reflection of investments or more a question of mix? And how do you see that evolving over the next few years? Thank you.
Okay. So the start to the year, Sazney, I think Q1 will look a lot like Q4 overall.
We're expecting to be in the middle of the 6-8% range. We've got a similar drag from data breach. I think a strong and robust performance is expected in Q1. Clearly, as you go out in the year as a whole, we have a broader range as you would expect. We run lots of different sensitivities and scenarios on macro. But 6% to 8% for the year as a whole, starting in the middle. On margin, yeah, we had a very strong year, as you said. I think it bodes well. This year, last year, and this year ahead are the two toughest years across our five-year plan. That we're outperforming, I think, is good. In the 30 to 50 basis point guide for the year ahead, there's about a 30 basis point drag from the acquisitions.
The organic margin development is actually stronger than that, which shows the strength of the portfolio. Of course, the drag that we have from acquisitions, we get back later in the plan as we integrate and are able to take cost out. That, again, bodes well for our flexibility for investment in the latter part of the plan.
Thank you. Just one on B2B margins, please.
Yes. B2B margins. As I mentioned, if you look back, B2B margin overall has been flat. We have had the impact of the buildup of dual run costs for the cloud transformation in that B2B margin. You have also got the investments in things like verifications and the build of Ascend in there and the suppressed lending environment. All of that really is weighing on that B2B margin.
For different reasons, we expect all of those headwinds to turn to tailwinds as we go over the next few years. Of course, the unknown is what other things we want to invest in. I think, again, the outlook for the B2B margin is good.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. It comes from Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi. Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Lloyd. I have three questions as well, please. On acquisitions, you've clearly already got a decent contribution locked in at 3% for this year. Can we assume you expect to complete further deals in the coming quarters?
Perhaps as part of that, can you comment more broadly on the acquisition environment in terms of the assets that you're seeing, valuations, competition, et cetera.? Equally, if you were to complete further deals, is there any risk to that 30 to 50 basis points of margin guidance given the dilution of those deals initially? Or are you confident in delivering that margin expansion regardless of any additional acquisitions? Secondly, just on ClearSale, appreciate only closed in early April, I think. How quickly do you expect to integrate those data assets and realize synergies there? Is that something you expect to do in this financial year? Lastly, just on mortgage in the U.S., remains strong, but I think it's nearly all pricing, if that's right. What are your expectations for that through the year ahead?
Do you expect volumes to remain broadly where they are given where rates are, macro, etc.? Thank you.
Great. Thanks. Thank you for the questions. To deal with the acquisition environment, I do not think it has changed that much. I think we always have a very active pipeline. I think when you look at the acquisitions completed in the last 12 months, I have made this point several times, they have actually been in the pipeline for quite some time. As I referenced, for example, Audigent was a business that we had initially had a minority stake in. Gestation time for these can be quite long and very difficult to know whether they land. The areas that we will focus on will be the same, building out in line with our strategic priorities.
It's very difficult to say whether we'll sort of, I don't think we'll have as active a year as we did this year. I think it really depends on situations as they arise. I think on the margin point, yeah, I think our guidance analysis is in relation to acquisitions that have already been completed. Obviously, when we make acquisitions, our job is to try and create value by deploying capital. Usually, what that means is there's a little bit of a drag in a current year, and then we build to group average margins over time. Any drag you get in a year, a bit like my comments earlier, you actually get back in future years. We obviously can't speculate on acquisitions we haven't seen or announced, but that's usually the effect.
Just coming back to your question on ClearSale, yes, it is very early days. We are very pleased with what we've seen so far. It is a very strong team there. The business is living up to our expectations in terms of market position. It's actually exceeding our expectations in terms of the quality of the data assets that they have. They are much more extensive than we expected. This is a public company. Whilst we were able to do some diligence, we were not able to go into great depth on some areas. Actually, we have found that this is a much more comprehensive data asset than we had planned for, which is terrific news.
I think it gives us great, great confidence that this will materially enhance our propositions across all verticals that we play, particularly obviously fraud, but also back into credit risk and across the whole portfolio. We are very pleased with that. Obviously, a long way to go on that, but good start. I think you are right in that the mortgage performance this year was largely driven by price. I think next year, the expectation really is linked to the interest rate cycle. While there is sort of latent, I think demand pent up in the mortgage market, until we see significant changes in interest rates, I think we are expecting the environment to remain broadly the same. Lloyd, do you want to comment further on that?
Yeah. I think it is sensitive to, as Brian said, to the interest rate.
If you look back last year, your volumes were a bit higher on reducing expectations for rate in the second quarter. I think you see a bit of a lower, a harder comp on those when we get to the second quarter. Obviously, it's a smallish business for us, I don't think it will continue to get a 60% to 70% pricing benefit. I think that's going to moderate more to 30% to 40% for the year as a whole on flat volume, I think, is our base assumption for the year as a whole.
That's great. Thank you very much.
Thanks.
Thank you. Now we're going to proceed with our next question. It comes from Kelsey Zhu from Autonomous. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have three questions.
The first one is you've given us a lot of helpful colors on insurance marketplace and just customer services in general. I was wondering if you can also give us some updates on the other strategic growth drivers, including Ascend, PowerCurve, and verification services, just the type of growth that you've seen in FY 2025 and your expectations for FY 2026. Second question is on Brazil. Just curious to hear your thoughts around that recovery timeline. When do you expect growth to reaccelerate, as well as what are some of the key drivers behind that? Is it just macro changes, fiscal policy changes, or are there other drivers that you're looking forward to? My last question is on U.S. customer credits. Obviously, we've seen customer confidence fall off the cliff since the start of this year, which historically generally leads to lower customer credit origination activities.
In this context, I was wondering, what are your outlooks for different verticals of customer credits in the U.S. for the next few quarters? Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Okay. Let's address these. Let's do the last one first. I think consumer confidence indexes, it can move around pretty rapidly from quarter to quarter. What we look at more closely is the unemployment rate. It's much more indicative of what the underlying conditions in the markets are going to be and how behaviors will play out. They remain strong in the U.S. I think that also reflects the commentary that you're seeing from major banks and their results and, I think, other market players. I think as long as that holds, you have a relatively good backdrop.
It's interesting that the marketplaces in the U.S. and elsewhere have actually picked up on credit cards and loans in the last quarter. It's almost a sort of surprising thing given the narrative backdrop. I think that's further evidence that we haven't really seen any impacts or any broad impact on that. Obviously, there's a lot of caution and questions and wondering going on. The conditions on the ground remain broadly as they are. Until something significant changes on that, I think that's the operating environment we're assuming will continue. I think your first question was really on Ascend, PowerCurve, and some of the other verticals. I think broad question on Ascend and PowerCurve as two separate products, really two groups of products, continue to do very well.
You can sort of see that in the commentary in terms of some of the progress we're making in individual markets with things like sandboxes, and marketing, and others. You can also see that in the decisioning lines where we've seen growth in lots of different places. I think that they continue very strongly. Obviously, the big opportunity for us as we go forward is connecting those products, which they are now connected to Ascend Technology Platform, and get further penetration of that as we go forward. On the verifications, we continue to make very good progress both in the U.S. and in the U.K. I'll ask Lloyd maybe to give a color on that. Lloyd, do you want to pick up on that and then maybe cover off on the Brazil recovery timeline?
Yeah, sure.
I think as we've talked about, Kelsey, our strategy is to bring a lot of these products together and to have integrated propositions with clients on the Ascend Technology Platform. We're very much selling these now as integrated propositions. The progress is really very good. We've given, I think, quite a bit of color. On verifications, it was a really strong year for us. We had really good progress with clients. We added, most importantly, 8 million unique records. We were at 54 million this time last year. We were at 62 million. You can see the progress of continuing to grow our record count, which, of course, is the real unlock for us in that market a s Brian said, good progress in the U.K. as well.
On Brazil, I think if you look at where we finished Q4, I think certainly the year ahead is better than that overall. I think the key unlock to getting back to double-digit growth, though, is an improvement in the macro. You are still in the rate tightening part of the cycle in Brazil. I think you need to see that come to a different place before you start to see a very strong recovery in the core bureau. We have got a lot of assets now in Brazil outside of core credit. With ClearSale, we have got a unique fraud asset combining our proposition and theirs. We have got Ascend and analytics products that are building out and being distributed. Of course, we have got a unique consumer platform.
I think we feel very good about the breadth of the platform we have in Brazil to be able to continue to grow well. Very elevated levels of growth, I think, require a more positive macro tailwind.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. It comes from Sylvia Barker from JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you. Hi, morning, everyone. Three from me as well, please. Marketing costs as a proportion of sales stepped down maybe 60 basis points, which I presume was a large part of the improvement in the B2C margin. You now have very impressive scale in terms of consumer relationships. Do we expect that that kind of marketing spend as a proportion of sales might continue to decline, or what is a normalized level for that going forward?
Second question, as you said, the marketplace continues to be stronger, I guess, on the credit side. Now with credit cards at double digits as well. How do we think about, I mean, in theory, it should be quite correlated with the credit bureau. How do we think about, I guess, the trends on the credit marketplace side and in the core credit bureau? Maybe how much of that growth is demand versus kind of supply-driven? Final question, it's still early days on the Ascend Technology Platform, but have you seen any mixed shift away from transactional revenue at this stage? Maybe can you just remind us of the proportion of transactional revenue at the group level today and where you hope that might be in five years' time, let's say? Thanks.
Great. Thank you.
On the consumer services marketing point, you can see that's broadly maintained year on year. It is a sort of strategic asset for us. We take decisions year on year as to what that should be and where we see opportunities to invest behind specific products or specific market events. We do that. I think we control that very well. I think you would probably nod at a very good level. It could go up slightly. It could more or less stay the same. I do not think it's materially different to where it is today as a proportion of revenues. I think on the credit side, one point to say about marketplaces and broader bureau is that they are not perfectly correlated because, one, they are concentrated on individual product groups such as cards and loans, which is only a fraction of the market.
They're concentrated on one channel in the market and not the broad market. Of course, there's no perfect correlation between the clients across bureau and across marketplace. You can see different trends. Generally speaking, I think if you see positive trends in marketplace in card and loans, you expect that to be a good indicator that clients are feeling confident about extending credit to certain customer groups, at least. On the Ascend Technology Platform, we are in the very early stages of that. We've seen a lot of product migrations across there. Most of those migrations have been on subscription-based products today. We've seen a lot of cross-core migrations. We've seen a lot of PowerCurve migrations. No major makeup there.
What we have seen, and what I think we will see increasingly more of, is more and more of what batch-related revenue will move on to Ascend Technology Platform, particularly Ascend Sandbox. That will give us a much more recurring revenue stream for that particular activity that we have. You actually saw a little bit of that in Brazil in the last quarter, actually. I think that's a very positive move because it moves into a sort of more away from a one-off and more towards recurring revenue stream. Early days, but I think we're optimistic about that. I don't think that to date that's really changed the makeup, the mix of the Lloyds, would you say?
No, no. I think clearly, as we progress with the scaling of Ascend, every year we see more revenue with those clients. This is our strategic intent.
It comes from bundled and platform propositions, and more of it is software and less of it is transactional. It does not change the percentage at a group level of about 50% in any one year. Our intent is clear. Our intent is to have integrated workflow platforms, and that would be how we increasingly go to market with clients.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Now we are going to take our next question. It comes from Lyon of Arthur Truslove from Citi. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you very much, and good morning. A couple from me, if I may. The first one was just around the consumer business in the US. Are you able to just say, provide the split of revenue in % terms again?
Between the subscription business, the marketplace lending business, the marketplace insurance business, data breach, and indeed anything else, also just give an idea about how each element of that actually grew. The second question was your bureau obviously accelerated pretty nicely in Q4 outside of mortgage, as it did in the previous year. Is there anything that you'd sort of consider to be somewhat one-off in there, or is it all sort of normal run rate type thing? The third question, are you able to just remind us how much revenue comes from Ascend and verifications again? I know you've sort of disclosed bits and pieces around that in the past, but just wondered if you could say it again. I don't know if I missed it, but how much did each of those grow in FY 2025? Thank you.
Great. Thank you.
Let's deal with those, and Lloyd can jump in. On the consumer business end, I think we give out the split of revenue. I think broadly, breaking it down through the commentary and the slides, we had a strong year in membership. We had a strong year in insurance. We had a more muted year in cards and loans, although I think we've said that that actually came back fairly strongly in Q4. Broad-based growth across lots of different product lines and skewed in that direction. On the bureau Q4 acceleration outside of mortgage, no, there weren't any particular one-offs. I think it just reflects the underlying performance of the business. We always have a strong Q4, so that's not unusual. It's not one-off. It's sort of recurring Q4 surge.
I think we're confident about where we stand at the level of business that we have in the bureau. On the revenue breakdown from Ascend and verifications?
Yeah. We're obviously, as I just mentioned, increasingly selling bundled platforms. The individual product revenue is much less relevant. Within that, we've seen very good progress on Ascend, continued penetration with clients. I think in Brian's comments earlier, you can see the progress on that. Experian Verify, again, continued to grow very well. As I mentioned, the growth in record count, I think, was exceptional this year and well ahead of our plans with 8 million records added. That, again, shows a lot of progress. The individual product revenues are less relevant as we sell these as integrated propositions.
Thank you.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question.
The question comes from James Rose from Barclays. Your line is open. Please ask the question.
Hi, there. I've got two left from myself. The first on margin outlook in FY 2026, and you've already commented that the organic expansion is actually quite significant. I think from your prior commentary, I sort of assumed that it's more skewed towards the consumer side of things. Perhaps a bigger contribution from maybe Latin America or marketplace. Is that the case, or is there anything else you particularly call out on your margin outlook? Secondly, touching on your fraud identity business within North America, could you sort of give us an idea of the size of that and perhaps your specific growth ambitions for that business line? Are you taking share in that space?
I'll maybe start with margin, and then I'll let Brian talk about fraud.
If you go back to the comments I made, 30 to 50 basis points for the year as a whole. Within that, there's about a 30 basis points drag from acquisitions. If you think about where we've made those acquisitions, clearly, Brazil is the biggest for a full year with ClearSale. You'll see that I think the B2B margin reflects that in Brazil. It will be down a bit. Equally, in EMEA Asia Pacific, the B2B margin overall for the group will reflect a slightly lower margin from Ilion, but that's actually accretive to the margin of EMEA Asia Pacific if you look at it at that level. I think given the technology transformation costs and the investments and acquisitions land in B2B, you'll see a more skewed B2C margin progression in the year ahead.
The drag that we have from those acquisitions and the reversal of the dual-run costs start to benefit B2B really from FY 2027.
On the fraud business, I do not think we disclose the actual size of it, but it is sizable, and we are one of the largest players in originations fraud in North America as we are globally. It is a big business for us. We have, I think, a lot of opportunity to grow. You saw with the NeuroID acquisition, it is a nice complementary asset to really help build that capability out. We will continue to increase the level of organic investment here in new products such as Fraud Sandbox. It is an area that we have highlighted for continued investment and growth, and we are confident that will continue to progress.
Obviously, you can see the progression of that very clearly in Brazil over the last few years with the initial acquisition of BeyondScan and now ClearSale, which is the first step really that we've taken into transaction-related fraud. I think it's an area that we'll continue to really focus on going forward.
Great. Thanks so much.
Thank you. Dear speakers, there are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Brian Cassin for any closing remarks.
Great. Thank you. That concludes today's session, and thank you everybody for joining us. Hope you all have a good day, and we look forward to speaking to you again in July for our Q1 trading update.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a nice day.