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Earnings Call: Q1 2022

Jul 15, 2021

Speaker 1

Thank you very much, operator, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to our Q1 Trading Update Call. Joined today by Lloyd Pitchford, and Lloyd will take you through the trading performance after my opening remarks. So as you've all seen, Q1 was a very good quarter, better than we anticipated, with total revenue growth up 31% at actual rates And organic revenue growth was 22%. Of course, the comparative was a weak one as we lapped the height of the pandemic related slowdown last year. But even on a 2 year basis, this is a very good result.

I'm very pleased to report that all regions and segments were in positive territory. And special mention again does go to Consumer Services, which delivered organic revenue growth of 32%. We made use of the past year to We've strengthened our market position and we emerged from the pandemic as a much bigger force than before. We now have 116,000,000 free members globally, And we still see plenty of growth opportunity ahead. Now I'm immensely proud of the efforts by our teams from around the world to drive financial inclusion.

At Experian, we believe that every individual deserves the opportunity to reach their fullest financial potential through fair and affordable access to credit. And we see that one of the key roles that we can and do play is to level the playing field people in marginalized or low income communities to provide more equitable and affordable access to credit. Experian Boost and SCOR Turbo help people build credit profiles that paint a fuller picture of people's financial lives. And there's a lot more that we can do by promoting financial literacy through expanded data sources, innovation and collaboration. Programs like our United Financial Health Program are good examples of this, but there is perhaps no better example anywhere of how we use data to improve outcomes People and products like Boost and no better demonstration of how people's data can be used to benefit them and not just others.

Moving to the regions now, let's move to North America. Let's start with the Q1 highlights. Unique amongst Regions North America delivered growth in Q1 last year. And while the comparison is a weaker one, it's not especially so. And I think that puts into context just how strong the Q1 performance in North America was.

Lenders are issuing credit cards again as credit quality improves. We see increased activity across Financial Services clients, FinTechs, Buy Now Pay Later and other segments, with a strong bounce back in prospecting and acquisition volumes even as mortgages tails off. Clients are focused on digitizing their services, driving demand for products like Ascend, our cloud enabled decisioning propositions and fraud and identity management. We've also made very good progress across verification services quarter with all acquisitions trading on or ahead of our buy plan and an encouraging client reception and some new wins for our VERIFI position. Health had a strong quarter too.

While there has been a mix of drivers through the course of the pandemic, Fundamentally, increased demand for new products in Healthcare Systems is creating new opportunities. So we have benefited to an extent from growth in authentication volumes linked to the vaccine rollout, but our performance was strong across the breadth of our product suite. We also had a very strong quarter for new business bookings with implementations for new digital onboarding services like registration accelerator, which shifts the patient experience away from paper based processes to a more digital experience. Consumer Services delivered another outstanding results. Over the past year, we have significantly enhanced our position in lead generation.

Our membership base has now reached 44 1,000,000 free members, and we have expanded integrations with lender partners. We are benefiting from a bounce back in lending As we have expanded the membership base and therefore have more traffic, we are an increasingly attractive and important marketplace for lenders. The U. S. Is also still in its infancy of digitizing marketplaces like auto insurance, and we made a lot of progress over the past year to further penetrate this new vertical.

Our premium offers also continue to do well. Last year, we saw a big influx of subscription members and so far these proved to be resilient. We're enriching membership offers and investing in more personalized interactions which will help drive growth and retention. Now moving to Latin America, we had a very good quarter in Latin America, which in Q1 was our fastest growing region. The pandemic is still fairly rampant across the region with case rates at very high levels.

That said, Brazil is making progress on vaccination rates and this is helping the economy recover. Agriculture is performing well on the back of increasing commodity prices. New business creation has increased and default rates have seen some improvement as restrictions have eased. These indicators bode well for the future. And in the meantime, we have seen steady volume recovery in B2B.

At the same time, positive data adoption is growing. The fintech sector continues to gather pace, giving us new areas to address. New product contribution was a significant factor in B2B revenue performance this quarter with a notable contribution from positive data As we've introduced new attributes and with propositions like Sarasa SCOR gaining wider acceptance. More people are coming into the financial net in Brazil and it's driving growth in consumer services, which had another tremendous quarter, more than doubling our revenues. Limpinome saw more success adding new partners and making further progress digitizing the offline collections market.

FinTech providers want to acquire large audiences, cost effectively, and they can do that on our digital platform through our eCRED marketplace. We now have 62,000,000 free members and we're making rapid progress to grow and diversify our revenue base. We also continue to take steps to extend and expand our franchise across the Latin America region. And towards the end of the quarter, we completed the acquisition of a new credit bureau in Chile. We also had a very strong start to the year in the UK and I.

We've made a lot of progress improving the business And we're very well placed as the economy recovers. The big swings have been in core Bureau volumes, Generally speaking, volumes are now tracking above pre pandemic levels. In Consumer Services, we've had record performances from lead generation as credit Supply increases. It's also important to emphasize that the core business KPIs are also trending positively. Revenue from new products is expected to grow this year.

Our new business pipeline is healthy with our win rates very encouraging led by our ongoing investments in data quality and coverage and by our ability to deliver value added services to our customers And our B2B innovation pipeline is very strong. Consumer Services clearly had a very positive Q1 and it has got a lot of momentum. Membership growth has been very healthy now at approximately 10,000,000 free members. Turning now to EMEA Asia Pacific, where we saw good recovery, But there's where there's still somewhat of a mixed picture country by country. We've seen recovery in Bureau volumes across most markets, although against particularly weak comps in some areas.

While more developed countries in Europe have progressed well with their vaccine rollouts, Some of our markets are still very much in the grip of pandemic or like Australia and Malaysia have entered new lockdowns. That said, some positive structural trends are clearly emerging. The pandemic has capitalized investment by banks and digital platforms. We can see this in the recent bank consolidations across Europe. It's likely to accelerate the pace of bank branch closures in favor of digital banks.

We also see it in markets like India, which struggled to deliver financial services during the pandemic due to reliance on offline infrastructure. We feel very well positioned to serve this need, particularly in European markets for our open banking and cloud enabled capabilities mentioned before like Ascend, Experian 1, CrossCore. These are becoming much more tangible client conversations and in the deals that we're signing and in new business pipeline creation. So with that overview, I'm now going to hand it over to Lloyd for the financials.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Brian. Good morning, everyone. As you've seen, we had a strong start to the year and ahead of our expectations with organic revenue growth of 22%. Our core lending markets were strong, including a bounce back in unsecured credit volumes and consumer credit activity as we saw market restrictions ease. The outperformance versus our guidance in the Q1 came primarily from our Consumer Services and Consumer Bureau businesses in our 3 core markets as credit activity recovered strongly.

Organic revenue for Consumer Services was up 32%, whilst B2B was up 18%. Including acquisitions, our total revenue growth at constant exchange rates was 28% higher as we saw the benefit from the acquisitions we made across the last year. Exchange rates were a 3% revenue tailwind in the quarter, driven by the appreciation in sterling. Including this, total revenue at actual exchange rates by 31%. Looking first at the performance in North America, where organic revenue It was up 22% with B2B up 19% and Consumer Services up 28%.

Data within B2B was up 20% with strength in all business units. A continued improvement in Bureau volumes delivered Strong growth across Consumer and Business Information. Volumes were up strongly both on FY 2021 and FY 2020 levels as we saw a catch up in activity as market restrictions were eased. Excluding mortgage, the growth in our Consumer and Business Bureau was 26%. Mortgage revenue was flat against last year as higher interest rates reduced refinancing demand.

We still expect mortgage to be a group headwind of around 1% for the full year. Decisioning was up 17% as both Health Decision Analytics grew double digits. Within the Health business, volumes were a key growth driver as hospitals undertook higher levels of elective surgery versus the height of the pandemic in the prior year. Authentication volumes were strong, linked to some extent to the vaccination program as were coverage discovery and revenue assurance. Decision Analytics benefited from spend in fraud and ID volumes.

Consumer Services was up 28% as our subscription business continued to grow well with the paid member base continuing to deliver growth even as we lap the elevated level of acquisitions last year. Lead generation revenue almost doubled during the quarter as credit supply continued to return to the market And as our auto insurance vertical continued to perform well following its launch last year, We continue to be very active in investing in new innovations and marketing to take advantage of the significant momentum we've built across the Consumer Services business. Moving on to Latin America, where organic revenue was up 25%. At constant exchange rates, Total revenue was up 31%, including revenue from the Brazil acquisitions. Factoring in an FX tailwind during the quarter, Total revenue grew 33%.

B2B was up 18% organically, whilst consumer services more than doubled for the 5th consecutive quarter, up 107%. Data grew 16% organically as increased economic activity led to higher volumes in the bureau. This work was supplemented by strength in positive data, new propositions like Experian Ascend and the expansion of Sarasa Auto. Consumer Services continues to make great progress, and we had another very strong quarter on the back of strong membership performance. Revenue was driven by volume increases in Lymphonome, increases in marketplace offers as we scale eCRED and contribution from our premium subscription product.

Turning to the U. K. We saw 20% organic revenue growth, up 35% at actual rates. B2B and consumer services grew 15% and 37%, respectively. Within B2B, data grew 20% during the quarter, helped by bureau volume recovery to pre pandemic levels.

We saw strength across both acquisition and prequalification as credit supply returned to the market and lenders were very active in new customer acquisition. Decisioning was up 8% organically with the momentum in volumes we saw at the end of FY 2021 continuing into the Q1 as demand for both identity and fraud and analytics products continues. Consumer Services grew 37% with growth across both subscription and lead generation, which has benefited from the return of credit supply in the market as lending criteria of the East. Moving on to EMEA and Asia Pacific, where organic revenue grew double digits at 19%, with data and decisioning up 23% 14%, respectively. On the data side of the region, we're seeing a recovery in Bureau volumes Nearing pre pandemic levels in our key markets and decisioning performed well during the quarter with a good pipeline, particularly in our EMEA markets.

Turning now to expectations for the rest of the year. Given the strong start to the year, we've raised our full year organic revenue guidance to 9% to 11%. And we therefore expect growth in the 6% to 8% range organically for the rest of the year, taking account of the expected drag from mortgage, with Q2 starting at the higher end of this range. Adding in our organic revenue brings this total revenue growth guidance to 13% to 15% for the full year. Our margin guidance unchanged, delivering strong margin accretion, which we've guided as at least 60 basis points of margin progression at constant currency.

And all other areas of our modeling considerations remain unchanged for now and we'll provide a further update at the half year. And with that, let me hand you back to Brian. Thanks,

Speaker 1

Lloyd. And so to summarize, we've had a very good start to FY 'twenty two with a stronger than expected Q1. The comparatives do get tougher from here, but we do expect this to be a very good year overall for Experian. We see a lot of opportunity ahead, very significant one in Consumer Services. We've terrific lead in positive data in Brazil and exciting prospects in verticals like health and verification services.

We're making great progress and did a lot of heavy lifting in the U. K. In the last year. I think we're well placed to take advantage of recovery there. And so while there remain uncertainties and some pandemic related issues as we look through the rest of the year, we do feel good about our prospects as a whole.

And with that, we're going to open up the line for your questions. So back to you, operator.

Speaker 3

Thank you very much, sir. All questions will be answered in the order received and you will be advised when to ask your question. All other lines will remain on listen only. So as a reminder, it is Thank you. And I can already see some incoming questions.

The first one is from Oscar Waugh Mass.

Speaker 4

It's Oscar from JPMorgan. I had two questions. The first one on consumer services. You've touched on this in the prepared remarks, but could you comment specifically on the competitive landscape in the U. S.

T2C market And how your market shows is going against your competitors now that there's more marketing spend in the system? And then the second question is touching again on EBIT margins. You've kept your guidance unchanged at least 60 basis points. Can you perhaps remind us if anything's changed given you've upgraded the revenue guidance? So yes, those are my two questions.

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Maybe I'll deal with the first one and Lloyd touched on the EBIT margins. Now we don't see any change in the competitive landscape. As I said in the prepared remarks, we've spent the last year actually really solidifying our position across a broad Actually, of consumer services propositions. We refer to lead gen, I think, because actually that market is coming back very quickly.

We expected it would. It obviously had quite a big Contraction last year as we went into the pandemic, so we fully expected that we would see strong growth on that. I think The reference that I made, the fact that our membership base has grown very significantly now to 44,000,000 members, I mean, that's a very, very significant platform. And I know we spent last year improving and increasing number of lender integrations that we have. So I think we're well set here to continue to make great progress in Consumer Services across the board.

Speaker 2

As I mentioned in the remarks, we've got really good momentum in our consumer businesses across the 3 markets. And This is the time to really take advantage of that momentum and continue to invest in customer acquisition and product innovation. So With the majority of the beat to guidance coming from the Consumer Services business, we're taking the opportunity to continue to invest behind that momentum. So That means that the extra revenue is coming at about group average margins. So that means the guidance is retained the full year.

We'll provide a further update at the half year.

Speaker 5

Okay, great. That's very clear. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you very much. Our second question is coming from Paul Sullivan. Paul, please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Yes. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I know it's quite difficult to split out, but how should we think about the structural and the cyclical contributions growth in the Q1 and what it means For the guidance of $6,000,000 to $8,000,000 through the rest of the year. And with the backdrop of fairly subdued lending still in the U.

S. And that lag in Europe, it feels But there is still a cyclical recovery ahead of you. And on that basis, how do we think about the full year guidance still being fairly conservative? Then secondly, any color on sort of consumer engagement? I know the membership base is still ticking up quite nicely, But any sort of color on engagement and then the next steps of broadening out the lead gen platform?

And then finally for me, do you think that So the regulators recognize the importance of consumer contributed data and boost and how it's changed? And do you think it changes the narrative your in the conversations you're having with them. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Okay. Hello, Paul. So I'll deal with the consumer engagement regulation points and Lloyd can come back on the cyclical versus the structural growth. Just dealing with the last question first, I absolutely think that this is changing the narrative in discussions that we're having with regulators all over the world. Obviously, we are demonstrating to them exactly As I said in my remarks, exactly what the whole point of consumer contributed data is, which is to actually help people get better outcomes.

That's What boosts and score turbo in Brazil does. Actually, one of the best demonstrations of this is, I think some stuff which is coming out of Brazilian Central Bank right now, and they're doing some early sort of analysis of what's happening They're on the back of positive data. And what we're seeing is a significant contraction in credit spreads, which of course and a significant increase in the number of people that are included in the mainstream financial net. So Really, that is the best demonstration you can have of where you significantly increase the amount of data that can be viewed on a consumer and it gives direct and very material benefit to them. It's obviously the quantum of that increase is very Significant in the market like Brazil is moving from negative to positive data, where you have very well developed markets like U.

S. And UK, You really kind of the benefits that you give really fall on the lower scored Part of the population are indeed the part of the population that can't be scored at all. So most governments are focused on financial inclusion. Most governments are focused on Fairness and getting people better outcome. And actually, this is exactly what these products are designed to do, and we are getting traction with that.

And your second point on consumer engagement, yes, there's a lot of investment going into the platforms to Really enhance and to increase the frequency with which people use the platform. We are seeing good progress on that. That will be a focus for us going forward. I think we feel good about all the propositions that we can put on the platform. But really, it's The multipronged strategy, I think that's one thing that we will do.

We obviously have highlighted that we have, I think, a long runway of growth in lead gen Go and other verticals like the insurance one is still growing very fast in North America. So I think There's a lot going on in Consumer Service. We feel very good about the broad panoply of things that we're doing there. And then Lloyd, do you want to come talk about the comparators?

Speaker 2

Yes. So yes, really interesting question for that, just looking at structural versus cyclical. There's obviously a lot going on in Q1. I think You clearly have weak comps, given the noise that was there this time last year. There's definitely an area an element of bounce back In terms of people being released from restrictions and active again, the benefit from our innovation Investment and obviously mortgage is in a shifting position from a tailwind this last year to a headwind.

I think probably the best way to think about it is For the rest of the year, we're pretty confidently back in that high single digit territory, taking account of The drag from mortgage, the North America Consumer Bureau, excluding mortgage, is going to be high single digits. We think for the rest of the year, Consumer Services globally will be strongly double digit. The areas of uncertainty in the guidance, probably a couple of things to call out. The How long does this bounce back in activity continue? Clearly, consumer balance sheets are strong coming out of the pandemic, but there's still quite a bit of uncertainty.

So that determines the range. And also on the subscription side of consumer, we've been Pleased that we haven't seen elevated churn levels on the members we added last year, and we've continued to add subscription members sequentially. But clearly, there's a range of possible outcomes as we go through this year. Just on your other point on consumer engagement, I just want to highlight really this we continue to add a lot of members. So this last quarter, we added 6,000,000 across the 3 geographies.

And that means In the last 12 months, during quite a turbulent world period, we've added 30,000,000 Members across our three geographies might give you a sense, I think, of the momentum we have behind the consumer business. And Our product development road map will bring numerous additional reasons for people to engage with us as New products get launched, so we're feeling very positive about that.

Speaker 6

That's great. Thank you very much.

Speaker 3

Thank you very much. Our second question is coming from I'm sorry, 3rd question is coming from Rajesh Kumar Rajesh. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Good morning. Just following up on the point you made about regulation. Clearly, there's an increased stress on data quality, data accuracy. Can you help us understand how your strategy of directly engaging with consumers versus Your peers, to a large extent, using Intuit Credit Karma as A mode of engagement affects that data improvement cycle And also how much data improvement you've seen since the last major study Almost 10 years back was taken by the regulators for experience. That would really help.

The second one is on the new markets you've gone to South Africa. South Africa is not a new market, but You've done an acquisition there in Germany and Chile. Can you give us a sense of how those what are the levels of growth And the piece of opportunity set you're seeing after the pandemic in terms of the next 2 to 3 years. And then finally, just on the drop through margins. You clearly Have a much faster growth.

So given the operational gearing, your margin guidance unchanged, Does that mean that you have basically started investing at a faster pace for The financial year 2023 Growth Investments.

Speaker 1

Great. Thanks, Rajesh, and good morning to you. So 3 quite wide ranging questions there. So let's Lloyd, you'll take the margin question, I'll do the regulation, the accuracy one. Just going on to the data quality.

Data quality is something that we've been very focused on for a long time. And we have very, very high levels of accuracy across all our bureaus. I'm actually pretty confident saying that our accuracy levels are higher than any bureau pretty much in every market that we operate in. And obviously, this is an area of great scrutiny that the regulators will be very focused on because clearly, the stakes that are made on consumers' credit reports could potentially lead to outcomes or wrong outcomes, and we all want to prevent that. If you look at the levels of accuracy across the bureaus, it's extremely high and people get a bit focused on the complaints portal with the CFPB.

But what you have to remember is a lot of those complaints come from credit repair companies. And so to a certain extent, they're sort of flooding. Of course, no mistakes are ultimately are acceptable, and we strive actually for 100% accuracy. Most of the mistakes And credit reports actually come from data furnitures, where inaccurate information comes into the system. And we work extremely hard to try and correct that.

In fact, we have a number of tools and products, And we are market leading in this, where we essentially check all the data that comes into us and provide that as a service back to the furnishers. And I think that's something that we're actually very highly regarded for in the marketplace. Today, our accuracy levels in the U. S. Stand at 99.9%.

When you think about the volume of data that we have, that we process. That's an extraordinary level of accuracy. Of course, the 0.1% is still actually a large number of people across very large population. We're never entirely sure whether we could get to 100%, but actually that number has moved from What was a high level of around about 97%, 98% sort of 5 or 6 years ago to that level of accuracy, which I think just illustrates that you don't do these things overnight and it illustrates to you that we've been doing this for quite a long time. If you take something like Brazil, where data accuracy is a bigger problem than somewhere like the U.

S, which is a much more well honed system, Then you can see a really big trend where on our consumer services business, we've actually been able to use the data that's contributed by consumers to improve our accuracy quite significantly in that marketplace. So consumer contributed data has a role to play. I think in markets where there is poor data quality. I think in markets where there's very high data quality consumer contributed data is less about accuracy and more about different types of information That can be used to give a different profile of the consumer and that particularly applies in things like Boost where it's in for our customers or Customers where we have no information, we can use different types of information to score them. So they're slightly different things.

But hopefully, you get a sense from what I've outlined that This is not a new focus for us. It's obviously a very hot focus for regulators. But I think we've got a really good story to tell, which frankly is not really represented very well by some of the groups that talk about this stuff. I don't think there'd be many companies out there that Claim 99.9 percent accuracy in an extremely large data file. But we're not going to rest until we can get that to 100% and that will be our focus.

Moving on to the acquisitions, I think your question, if you look at some of the Bureau acquisitions, we've had an extremely successful track record of wherever we can sensibly add. Bureau acquisitions, we believe that we're going to be able to add capabilities of those and drive really good opportunities for us over the next over the medium term. Germany is going extremely well. We're really happy with that. Obviously, that's a very large economy and a big opportunity for us.

Chile, the one we just announced, we actually have quite a large Decision Analytics presence in Chile, with most of the large banks actually already using Experian decisioning systems. This, I think, is a very sensible add on to our Spanish Latin American business and just enhances our footprint. We also We have quite a large employee footprint in Chile because some of our global development centers are based there. They service a number of our other at charities around the world. So yes, I think we're excited about the progress we're making with the acquisitions we've done, and I think we've got a very Just an approach to this, and we'll look to do more of that type if

Speaker 2

we can find them. Lloyd? Yes. And just to add on the acquisitions, as you look back In South Africa, in Spain, in Peru, where we've made Bureau acquisitions alongside an existing Bureau, are some of the most economic acquisitions we make where we're able to combine 2 euros in market and really provide A compelling market leadership proposition in that market. So we're feeling pretty good about those.

On to drop The consumer business is one that we can attenuate the investment pretty closely, and we know when we're adding value in the market. If you just look back At the last 5 quarters of growth in North America Consumer, we've gone 10%, 16%, 18%, 20%, 28%. That's a business a large business with momentum. And that's the time to continue to invest to extend that momentum. So We're continuing to invest and expand both our marketing and product launch investments.

We had a very significant launch in the auto Our vertical this time last year, that's progressing well. We'll have about $40,000,000 of revenue in that vertical this year from 0 a year ago. And I think that gives you a sense of why we're continuing to expand our And so what does that mean? It means the incremental revenue that we're seeing predominantly from Consumer Services is coming at about group average margins after that investment. So That's why we're keeping the margin guidance flat.

Speaker 5

Understood. Thanks.

Speaker 3

Thank you very much. Our next question is coming from Anvesh Agrawal. Anvesh, please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Hi, good morning. I just Scott, couple of questions on the margin side. First, Lloyd, you said that the Brazilian consumer business Probably was running at a breakeven rate last year or maybe slightly loss making. How do you see that developing this year given the run rate and the investment Both on the growth side. And then just on the U.

K. Margins, the long term ambition has been around like 30%. The transformation looks like it's going pretty well. And the U. K.

Is bouncing back. So where do you see sort of U. K. Moving in the 30% journey in FY 2022 on the margin side.

Speaker 2

Yes, sure. So the U. K, last year, we were at about 17% margin, and we said that with the restructuring activity and the real progress we're making on The restructuring and the transformation in the UK, we expected this year for that to come back to something of the order of 22% to 23 So quite a big jump back starting that journey back towards the long term goal of 30%. So good progress there. On Brazil Consumer, we said we were at the end of last year, you're getting to breakeven.

And from here, we'd expect Margin to continue to progress, so we expect to be profitable this year. Clearly, we have a very big opportunity in that Consumer business in Brazil. So we're principally focused on there on long term value creation. So whilst we expect it to be profitable this year, we're going to be

Speaker 7

Okay. And then just on the When you say the U. K. Can sort of reach 22% to 23% and it's like 14%, 15% of group revenue, that Self is more than 60 basis points of the margin accretion that you're guiding to for FY 2022. So Like does the margin guidance looks conservative given what you're going to do in the U.

K. Itself?

Speaker 2

No. I think you have to look at The different moving parts in the portfolio, so clearly, we had a very strong mortgage growth last This year, it will decline by about 1%. That's higher than average margin, the continued investment we're putting into marketing in the U. S. Consumer business and the mix, therefore, of margin in North America.

So when you take all of that in the round, About 60 basis points is where we're guiding in. I guess I've made this comment To some extent, near term margin is a choice for us. It's a choice of the investment that we're making to create value. And I think you've seen With the momentum we've built from our investments over the last 3 or 4 years of growth, the benefit that's coming to value creation from those investments. So that's really the thinking behind the margin guidance, Hamish.

Speaker 7

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3

Thank you very much. The next question is coming from Carl Green. Carl, please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Yes. Thank you very much. Good morning. I've just got two questions, please. The first one on Experian Boost in the U.

S. Are you able to quantify how many unscorable consumers and those with In files, you've helped to become scorable since Boost's inception, please. That's the first question. And then secondly, just in terms of the defined accuracy data You provided which is obviously very high. Can you just remind us as to what the definition of an accurate file stands out?

I think in terms of some of the narrative that's out Seems to be some confusion about how different companies are actually measuring that and what the different tiering stand out around that, please. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes, well, we would measure accuracy across every spectrum, which includes things like The accuracy of the name and address of the consumer, the data we have on file as well as the actual trade lines that are submitted. A lot of the inaccuracies that are reported as sort of detrimental inaccuracies often actually are Some simple inaccuracies on base data and not actually on trade lines. So within that 0.1%, How much of that would actually be kind of detrimental in that we've got trade lines wrong or disputes wrong? A smaller report, I don't actually have a split of that. Quite a few of them would simply be corrections to sort of personal details.

In terms of Boost results, We have a very significant benefit to unscorable people in that group because clearly those are the people that are Actually, mostly impacted by that. So the percentage of people with a new credit match offers after Boost would be about 76 Percent of people, roughly about 33% of people who were not previously scorable Become scorable with Boost. And to give you some of the stats, we've provided over $6,000,000,000 of credit to consumers that have completed a boost journey. And another data point of interest, the amount that you would the average amount saves on a 30 year mortgage By moving up the score tier, which a lot of people did, it would be in excess of $20,000 over the lifetime of the loan. We've got some really, really powerful statistics here to show exactly what benefit this is having for a lot of people.

And that's why we feel very, very strong about this proposition. And to the earlier question, why It also is being recognized by regulators as a very strong initiative.

Speaker 2

That's really helpful. I just want

Speaker 8

you to sort of quantify in terms of 1,000 or tens of thousands of people that you've helped rather than just percentages?

Speaker 1

Well, over 6,000,000 people have connected to Boost, since we launched. And we've had over 4,000,000 people who have improved their credit scores as a result of that. So that's just in the last year alone. So I think you can see it's actually very material.

Speaker 9

Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you very much. The next question is coming from George Gregory. George, please go ahead.

Speaker 10

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got a couple, please. Firstly, I think you have already partially answered these, but I wondered if you could just clarify The run rates, the revenue run rates for your 3 marketplace businesses, Please. And secondly, just on technology, Thinking about the midterm margin trajectory, clearly, there are a lot of Parts of the portfolio that should be moving in your favor like the UK and LatAm and so forth.

Is there a scenario in your technology planning where you would You might move more of your data to the cloud that Could change the transition of margin to the extent that you have higher Dual running costs or is that is the margin trajectory expansion against What you would could see as any reasonable technology scenario, please?

Speaker 2

Okay. I'll take the second one. We outlined, George, I guess, at the full year that we had a margin drag due to running costs in the P and L of about 1 100 basis points. And we think that will be stable this year and into the start of the following year, and then we'll start to abate. And then obviously, beyond that, you have the benefits of the transition, not just the elimination of the dual running costs.

And the assumptions we have are that We made quite a material shift out of our existing data centers into cloud infrastructure and cloud storage. Now exactly what percentage that It will be variable because clients have different positions on the use of cloud versus hosted data. But It's all encompassed in our the commentary that we've given. And that transition takes some time. I think any company that goes through A transition of this, we'll tell you it takes a number of years, but we're well progressed.

And yes, we've got all of the learnings from the complete shift, for example, of the consumer business on to cloud infrastructure and storage already in the business. On the run rate on the marketplace, very strong bounce back. So North America and Brazil, the lead gen business has more than doubled and in the U. K, more than tripled. We obviously that reflects a bit in the UK of a stronger negative position this time last year and the bounce back this year.

Speaker 10

Thanks, Lloyd. Those run rates the reference to growth, is that against the prior year?

Speaker 2

Right, yes.

Speaker 10

Thanks.

Speaker 3

Thank you very much. And the last Question on the line as I can see is coming from Caroline Convey. Caroline, please go ahead.

Speaker 11

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I actually want To ask about the decisioning side of the business, so the platform growth appears very strong across regions. Can you talk about what is potentially improving in this Based both on the customer side and within experience strategy. And then I also wanted to ask within that about the growth strategy for Fintech and BNPL.

You mentioned those are particularly strong points in the U. S. So I would just like to hear a little bit more about the product differentiation and what you expect to drive growth in these spaces.

Speaker 1

Sure. I'll let Lloyd comment on the actual comparators. But in terms of strategy of our Decision business, we're very clear about Where we're driving that business, it's we've cloud enabled the decisioning suite through investment in Experian 1. And alongside our sort of hosted applications, PowerCurve itself, one of the most recognized decisioning software suites in Financial Services. So I think we're starting to see a lot of traction and demand for cloud based decisioning.

We're starting we actually started to see that first in the U. S, a lot of good traction there. But it's starting to spread really across most territories. I think Lloyd will comment on the comparatives, but obviously we had DA is always the business that is a bit more cyclical for us. So it had a much bigger impact last year than even some of the Bureau businesses.

So you're starting to see us lap Some of that as well, but nonetheless, we are, as we referenced in the comments, starting to see really good client engagement and with people Starting to get back on to an investment cycle. In terms of the FinTech and buy now, Pay Later, we've got a very strong presence in those sectors. We provide services to pretty much everybody playing in that arena. To some extent, the services are exactly the same as we provide to many of our other clients, which is that they need credit data and decisioning, they need fraud, And we provide all of those products to those players. And we focus on that specific vertical.

They clearly have Different needs and demands, and we serve them in the way that they want to be served. And we've had a lot of success in that, and I think that will continue. Lloyd, do you want to just comment on the comparators?

Speaker 2

Yes, sure. So if you break decisioning down, the first bit to break out probably is U. S. Healthcare, which is within those numbers. And you can see from Page 2 of the release, that was growing strongly this time last very strong growth this year, up 19%.

And that's really as we bring the power of data to really try and transform the services that clients receive and that You manage a consumer's journey through the health care system. And we've seen very consistent growth in our Health business now for 7, 8 years, and we expect that to continue. Within Decision Analytics, Overall, this time last year, Q1 last year, that was down 14%. Q1 this year, it's up 19%. So you can see a pretty strong bounce back.

And within that, very good growth in fraud and ID As we see the shift to more digital originated transactions, good strong growth in analytics as people move to much more understanding real time data. Software, as Brian said, is a little bit lumpy. We've got the transition to cloud, which changes a bit the revenue recognition. And also some areas, particularly in Asia Pacific, and a little bit of EMEA, where some of the decision making is a bit longer on of those software transitions, but overall, decisioning as a whole, good strong progress and particularly good strategic progress.

Speaker 11

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you very much. And the last question is coming from Andy Grubler, Andy. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Hi, good morning. Just one from me, if I may. Just in terms of your VERIFI business, now it's relatively early days, but could you talk

Speaker 1

a little

Speaker 9

about momentum kind of in the early stages of that business And what your expectations are for that kind of in the medium term, I guess, over the next 2 to 3 years against Such a strong competitor. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes, sure. Hi, Andy. Thank you for yes, it's still really early days. But As we outlined year end, what our strategy was is, obviously, we made some acquisitions in Employer Services. We need to build our presence and our Unique data asset, we're doing that.

We're having, I think, very good engagement with our client base about our proposition. So I think that signs are encouraging. But as we said, it's still early days. We'll be able to tell you a little bit more as we go through half year year end, just exactly what progress we're making, but at this stage quite encouraging. I think As we've also said, this is a very large and very growing market.

Obviously, there's one extremely large competitor in there. I think that there's plenty of room for people to grow here, and there's absolutely a demand for some additional service provisioning here. So we're benefiting from that, I think.

Speaker 2

And just to scale it, Andy, I think I said the full year results, if you take the acquisitions we've made plus our organic plays, we'd expect our run rate revenue this year to pass over $100,000,000 So Whilst we're market leaders a long way ahead, that's a significant amount of revenue for us in a new growing space. So we're pretty excited about the opportunities.

Speaker 9

And can I ask on that, when you are winning business, Are you becoming an additional supplier to the incumbents, winning new kind of newly outsourced work or Taking share directly from the incumbent on hold? Yes.

Speaker 1

Well, I think Yes is the answer. It differs by client. But as I've explained before, It's not necessarily a substitution because if you have a unique data asset, which we're building through the Employer Services And they will not be data assets that are held elsewhere. So that gives a customer a reason to essentially use a waterfall approach and ping to both providers. So it isn't necessarily eitheror, I think is the answer.

Speaker 9

Great. Thank you very much.

Speaker 3

There are no further questions.

Speaker 1

Okay, great. Well, thanks everybody for joining. Thanks for all the questions. Wish you all a good day, and we look

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