Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Experian's First Quarter Trading Update Webcast and Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the Q&A session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star one one on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much, hello, everybody, and welcome to our Q1 trading update call. I'm here, as usual, with Lloyd, who'll take you through the trading performance after my opening remarks. We started the year on a solid note. Business is holding up well. Total revenue growth is 5% at actual and constant exchange rates, organic revenue growth was also 5%. All regions delivered growth with a double-digit performance again in Latin America, good progress in EMEA, Asia Pacific. By segment, Consumer Services, where we now reach 172 million free members globally, delivered 4% organic growth, B2B was up 5%. In all, Q1 was in line with the expectations that we discussed with you in May. Let me touch on some of the regional Q1 highlights, starting with North America, where organic revenue growth is 4%.
Our CI and BI businesses have been resilient. We have a diverse product line, and we saw good growth in many areas, which offset softness in core bureau services. We had a positive contribution from Ascend, Clarity, and [BRL], as well as in business credit. We're very pleased with the adoption of Ascend Ops, and other parts of our B2B portfolio also contributed favorably. Targeting performed well, particularly across digital channels, and automotive and health also delivered strongly. While some lenders are adopting a cautious stance and some are still tightening, there has been a stabilization in supply compared to the uncertainty which followed the regional banking stress, and that's now passed, and conditions remain largely the same as when we spoke to you in May. Consumer Services saw some deceleration. Credit marketplace conditions remain tight, and we still see very strong demand for credit.
Supply of offers has expected weakened a bit. We've been successful in mitigating this impact by onboarding new partners and expanding adoption of Experian Activate, which increases approval odds for our members and has elevated our share of available credit offers. We saw higher revenues from premium services driven by higher enrollments. Insurance also had a very strong start to the year, with a higher number of policies written in our marketplace and increasingly promising prospects. Turning now to Latin America, which delivered another strong performance with organic revenue growth of 13%. In Brazil, positive data, analytics, and other software products have sustained the momentum. We're making very good progress in our agribusiness vertical and also in the SME channel. We're very excited about the growth prospects we're seeing that are being driven by open data and open receivables.
Spanish Latin America, where we've steadily expanded our position with selective bureau acquisitions, also delivered another strong performance. Consumer Services had another strong quarter, up 26%. We've added new partners to Limpa Nome in Brazil, and we're making really great progress towards further business diversification, with growing contributions from payments and premium services. Despite the economic backdrop, we sustained modest growth of 1% in the U.K., with progress in B2B offsetting a reduced rate of contraction in consumer services. In B2B, the strong run of new business performance continues into this year. We have a lot of new products in market. We're encouraged by the performance so far. Volumes have been impacted as rate rises have caused lenders to reassess credit offers. However, we are encouraged by the momentum we see in our innovation pipeline.
This plus increased demand for affordability assessments and portfolio analysis have helped us withstand weaker acquisition and new credit origination volumes. Consumer Services business declined in the quarter, but at a lesser rate. Marketplace was impacted, but with several new lenders now joining our panel, we feel well positioned for when that market improves. We also saw gains in premium enrollments through the quarter, helped by increased adoption of CreditLock, where we continue to make significant enhancements to the consumer experience. Q1, it was a very good quarter for EMEA Asia Pacific. Delivered a very good organic revenue growth of 8%. Some notable call-outs, countries such as Italy, Australia, India, exhibiting really strong momentum and delivering double-digit growth.
While it's still relatively early days, we're making very good progress towards our ambition for stronger growth and margins in this part of our business. With that, short overview, I'm now going to hand it over to Lloyd for the financials.
Thanks, Brian. Good morning, everyone. As you've seen, we started the year in line with our expectations, with Q1 organic revenue growth of 5%. As Brian mentioned, our core lending markets in the U.S. and U.K. remained tight during the quarter, whilst our Latin America business continued to perform strongly and delivered double-digit growth. A number of our key verticals in North America delivered another good quarter. B2B globally grew 5%, whilst B2C grew 4%. In B2C, we continued our trajectory of strong membership growth, adding 4 million new members in the quarter, taking us to 172 million members. Acquisitions and exchange rates had a neutral impact on the revenue in the quarter, meaning total revenue at the actual exchange rates was 5%.
Turning to the performance by region and beginning with North America, where organic revenue was up 4%, with B2B up 4% and Consumer S ervices up 3%. Data was up 3% with growth in all business units. The bureau business, excluding mortgage, was up 2%, as revenue from core bureau volumes was down modestly and lenders were cautious around acquisition marketing. We continued to see strength elsewhere in the bureau, as Ascend delivered another double-digit quarter. Clarity Services grew well in a tough subprime market, and we had another very strong quarter of growth in employer services and verifications. As expected, mortgage revenue was down by 8% on a volume decline of 32%. As a reminder, mortgage revenue is now only around 2% of group revenue. Automotive had a strong quarter, growing 8% as industry inventory supply improved. Targeting also performed well, with growth of 9%.
Decisioning was up 7%, with health delivering another strong quarter of 9% growth, Decision analytics up principally due to strong software sales. Consumer Services was up 3% for the quarter. We mentioned in May that we expected the credit marketplace climate to be tougher due to tighter credit supply. Overall, U.S. marketplace declined by 4% against a very, very strong growth in the prior year. The subscription business delivered another quarter of good growth of 6% following the member acquisition growth in the prior year. Partner Solutions grew modestly in the quarter, as a reminder, we'll lap in Q2 and Q3, strong comparatives in the breach business for one-off breach support services. Moving on to Latin America, where organic revenue was up 13%. At constant exchange rates, total revenue was up 14%, including acquisitions.
Factoring in an FX headwind during the quarter, revenue grew 12%. B2B was up 10% organically, while consumer services delivered growth of 26%. Data grew 9% organically as momentum from positive data propositions continues, with our clients digesting more data through new solutions. We've been leveraging our global capabilities in customer management tools, and you can see that in the decisioning business, where we grew 15% in the quarter. Consumer services grew 26% organically. Limpa Nome continued to show strength, delivering another double-digit quarter as we expanded the service by adding new partners. Our payment service, PagueVeloz, grew strongly as we engaged more members and increased volume, including increasing cross-sell of integrated consumer journeys between Limpa Nome, PagueVeloz and eCred. Turning to the U.K., we saw 1% organic revenue growth.
B2B grew 1%, while Consumer Services was down 2% from last year. Data grew 2% during the quarter, and within this, the bureau was up 1%. As expected, lending volumes were weaker during the quarter as interest rates increased and lenders remained cautious. Whilst we saw more desire from clients for affordability propositions, and new business wins, product innovation also continued to support growth. Decisioning was flat from last year. A strong growth in analytics and marketing intelligence offset modest declines in the timing of deals in software and fraud. Consumer Services was down 2%. Marketplace revenue was down 7%, broadly stable sequentially, with where we ended last year, as lenders remained cautious and the credit requirements for new lendings remain tight.
We're continuing to add new lenders to the panel, and new approval propositions with key lenders are helping improve conversions. Subscription revenue also declined against last year, but grew sequentially, benefiting from the adoption of new features like CreditLock. Moving on to EMEA and Asia Pacific, where organic revenue grew 8%, with Decisioning growing 21%, coming from our Australia and New Zealand and Southern Europe markets. We also saw good growth in the bureau from India, Southeast Asia, Spain and Italy. Finally, turning to our near-term expectations. Our full year expectations are unchanged from what we discussed in May. We continue to expect core lending markets in the U.S. and U.K. to remain tight, while the rest of the group continues to grow well, in particular, our businesses in Latin America.
Accordingly, continue to expect organic revenue growth for the year as a whole in the range of 4%-6%, and we expect Q2 to be in the range of 4%-5%. Our margin guidance and modeling considerations remain unchanged. With that, let me hand you back to Brian.
Thanks, Lloyd. To summarize, we've had a very solid start to the year, helped by the strength and diversity of our portfolio. We continue to make good progress with all of our strategic initiatives, and these, plus the countercyclical features of our model, give us very good confidence that our business will continue to be resilient, and that we'll be able, as Lloyd said, to deliver on the full year expectations that we set out in May. With that, we'll open up the line for questions. Back to you, Operator.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, to ask a question, you need to press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by, we will compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. We're going to take our first question. Question comes from the line of Andrew Ripper from Liberum. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Good morning, everybody. A couple from me, if that's okay. Just following up, Lloyd, on your comments at the end there about the outlook. It sort of implies that the second half could be slightly better than Q2. Just wondering what sort of underpins that? I appreciate the delta's pretty modest, but are there any sort of swings that we should be aware about across the regions and businesses?
Thanks, Andrew. I think it's only a few short weeks since we outlined the guidance for the full year. I think we talked then about the range of scenarios that might determine the top or the bottom of the range. We started pretty much in the middle of the range, similar expectations to Q2. I think the second half is really going to be shaped by what we see in the economy. You can see our non-lending volume businesses continue to grow well. It'll really be the sentiment about that core lending that will shape the second half. A bit too early to call. Good start to the year, I think.
Okay. Just following up from that, focusing on North America, can you say what the growth rate is for employer and verification for the quarter? You know, for the businesses where you know, you have got the benefits of investment and sort of counter cyclicality, health, et c., auto, targeting, obviously also growing well. Do you see those growth rates being sustained in the second half?
Employed services and verification grew strongly, somewhere between 20% and 30%. You know, in line with the very strong growth rate we saw last year. I think the other businesses, they're all slightly different. I think, you know, clearly the health business has been a, you know, mid to high single-digit grower consistently. I think we expect that to continue. If you look at the targeting business, that's helped by the shift to digital marketing. Clearly, when you have more economic headwinds, some of the marketing budgets can be a little tightened, so we might see that soften a little, but we still expect good growth. Auto is interesting because you've got the recovery of supply offsetting what would normally be a time when things are tighter.
Just to remember there, less than half of our auto businesses is around the credit cycle. We've been growing lots of other analytical services there that help us support growth. If you take them all together, Andrew, yeah, we expect, you know, continued good growth from the non-volume businesses.
Then just finally, briefly, just remind me, Lloyd, on the central costs number, how much of that relates to the U.K.? Just thinking about the FX.
Yeah, something like, 2/3 to 3/4 of that will be sterling denominated.
Thanks very much.
Thanks, Andrew.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. Of Harry Martin from Bernstein, your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yeah, good morning, everyone. A few questions, please. The first one is, at the full year numbers, you give your revenue from new product innovation, and, you know, if you kind of take the sequential improvement, it looked like it drove more than half the organic growth last year. I wondered if you could give any comments on how much of the 5% organic growth in Q1 is from that new product innovation KPI? The second one, just on the philosophy to launching new consumer marketplace products, you know, like insurance, when the volumes in the marketplace are under pressure. You know, would you ever delay the launch of some of those products, or actually, you know, do you accelerate them to try and drive some volume back?
Then the final question, I think you've helpfully outlined the Brazilian consumer business and that integrated model there. I wondered if you could give any color on the proportion of the members today in Brazil that are being monetized on more than one product area, and potentially where that can go in the longer term? Thank you.
Great, thanks for those questions. Let's deal with the philosophical one first. I think insurance is not something that we've launched actually this year. You know, we introduced the insurance product some time ago, but we've been improving the product significantly, particularly the digital experience, which is crucial, and also improving the panel of insurance products that are available to members. It's really the factors that kind of determine, you know, what the right time to launch any particular product is going to be a combination of our own readiness with the proposition, obviously market backdrop to a degree, and, you know, when we feel that we can actually market the thing effectively. I think that doesn't apply to insurance.
I don't think there's really a whole lot. You know, we look at the sort of, for example, marketplace would be the area that you would think very carefully this year about a big push into a particular area, because you, while you'll make, you know, steadily, you can generate a lot of demand, the issue will be whether we'll actually be able to fulfill that demand. So that kind of weighs on how you think about that business during a time like present. On the Brazil question, really, the, there's sort of very low penetration of the membership base from the point of view of multiple products. You know, most of the members today, the majority of the revenues come from Limpa Nome.
We've seen significant growth in the other products, to date, you know, I think limited in terms of that penetration. I'm not sure that will be our focus, to be honest, because we still see significant growth in each of the individual product lines.
While cross-sell is an opportunity, I think the bigger opportunity actually comes from just continuing to actually grow the individual product lines where we see, you know, significant potential ahead. Obviously, the point that Lloyd referenced around the, you know, the utilization of the payment services on the Limpa Nome product is quite interesting. I think I, that was a strategic push that we made some time ago in buying that business because, you know, we felt that that would make the Limpa Nome product much more effective, and that's proving to be the case. That was, I think, the reference that Lloyd made about, you know, the utilization of those two services together. They were meant to be that way.
I think on the, you know, the new product, we don't give that split at a quarterly update. I'd be happy to give those updates at the half year and the full year.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes from the line of Kelsey Zhu from Autonomous. Your line is open, please ask the question.
Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I have three quick ones on North America. The first one is on the core credit bureau business. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the latest trends you're seeing across card, autos, and fintech accounts. I understand that auto is still holding up very strongly. How do you view sort of origination trends going into second half of this year and early next year in line of delinquency rates and write off rates now being back to 2019 levels, if not exceeding 2019 levels? The second question is on decisioning revenues. It's still up 7%, looks very strong. I was wondering if you can tell us a little bit about what's happening there, how much of that is driven by further share extensions from Ascend?
My last question is on North America Consumer Services. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about the 3% growth. How would you break that down into sort of market growth versus any sort of visible share shifts in the market? Obviously some of your competitors have talked about de-investing in that business.
Great. Thanks, Kelsey. Let's tackle those questions between us. Maybe I'll just give an overview response on the core bureau question and then some of the detailed growth breakdowns, I'll hand over to Lloyd. I don't think that we see any change in the conditions from when we talked to you in May. We talked to you in May, I think we had, and have been pointing out for some time, that we expected conditions to tighten in, and they have, and they haven't really changed.
I think you know, we're in that period now where there has been a broad tightening of credit conditions, and we expect that to continue probably, you know, for a while, certainly until we actually see, you know, the sort of end of the Fed's rate hike tightening cycle. I think, but, you know, I think we also see, you know, conditions in the marketplace, actually, in consumer economy being quite strong. Although delinquencies are up slightly, as you pointed out, they're actually only back at the 2019 levels, which wasn't anywhere near our sort of stressed level. I expect that there will be continued caution, but not stress, if that makes sense, or not excessive stress.
You know, I think it's our expectation that when some clarity about direction of where the economy is going, comes, I think you'll probably see people getting back on the front foot. You know, we think that's probably in the second half at some point. On the detailed questions, I think your second question is about decisioning. Lloyd, do you want to.
Yeah, just a couple of things there, Kelsey. Ascend is actually in data, not decisioning, but it highlights a point. I think the split between data and decisioning is becoming a little less relevant as we start to sell integrated propositions across Ascend and PowerCurve and Fraud and Identity. We're seeing good, really good momentum with those combined sales. You know, our strategy is to tie together all of the different things that we can do inside a bank, all the way from having the best data through the best onboarding, decisioning, identity or authentication, and then customer management. You're seeing that both in strength, inside data and in decisioning.
Then on consumer, as we mentioned, the, you know, the growth rates of the different pieces. The subscription business was up 6%. That was really the members that we added, the second half of last year rolling through into revenue this year. Marketplace was down 4%, and partner solution was up 2%. I think when you look at differential growth rates in marketplace, I think you have to think about the different mix of customers and products. We mentioned, you know, some of our competitors are more skewed to loans, others more skewed to cards, others to other products, and some of those have reacted a little bit differently to tightening credit conditions.
The key thing about this market, though, is it changes quite quickly when people get back on the front foot. I think this will be the first place we'll see growth return once people progress a bit on origination activity.
Okay. Okay. Back to you, operator.
Thank you. Kelsey, do you have any further questions?
No, very helpful. Thanks.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. Question comes from the line of Justin Forsythe from Credit Suisse. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Brian, Lloyd, thank you so much for having me on. Just a couple, if you don't mind. First, more strategic question. Just wondering if you could talk a little bit about the two-sided network flywheel that you're developing with the consumer app alongside the core bureau business and other ancillary businesses. I mean, you've got probably arguably one of the stronger consumer apps out there in this space with hundreds of millions in users. You know, obviously, that's feeding your products on the data side. I was just wondering if you could provide maybe a rough percentage or directional, like, quantifiable number on how much that bolsters your data coverage on the B2B side. I imagine perhaps there's a linkage with Experian Lift and some of the kind of unscorable, folks, but maybe you could just provide a little bit more color there.
Secondarily, I wanted to circle back to the B2C business in LatAm. Obviously, that continues to grow quite nicely. Maybe you could refresh us on what the growth algo is there between free members, conversion into paid, and higher engagement, and where it is skewed amongst those three categories. Perhaps, you know, if you're expecting law of large numbers to come into play, say, you know, 2H this year or any time going forward. Thank you.
Great. Well, thanks for those questions. I'll go first, and then I'll ask Lloyd to add in. Just deal with the LatAm one first, and just quick, because it's mostly free in LatAm now, because it's mostly focused on Limpa Nome. The eCred or the marketplace business has grown significantly over the last few years, but it's still pretty small. The paid business in LatAm is actually relatively small, and I don't think that will be a primary focus for us to leverage free into paid. I think we see the bigger growth opportunities in marketplaces and Limpa Nome, so that'll be our focus there. Going back to the, your question on the strategic position, I mean, obviously this is a deliberate strategy that we set out quite some time ago.
I think you can see the benefit most clearly in things like Boost, you know, where we actually use the consumer business to gain access to additional data from consumers and can use that to score them in a different way and give them potentially better offers and better outcomes. We think we're just really at the start of that. Our first sort of priority was to get scale in these memberships and relationships, which we have. Then, you know, once we've reached that, the last sort of, you know, few years, we've been now working on how we really leverage all that additional data that comes to us.
One really simple example would be in Brazil, where the data that we got through the Consumer Services business actually massively increased the accuracy of the file with things like email addresses and just basic record hygiene, which sounds innocuous, but is actually really important. That's point number one. Point number two, I think when you start to think about the volume of data that we're gathering in terms of email addresses and contact details and their application across fraud and other areas, you know, you start to sort of see quite significant potential there. We're excited about that, you know, that was deliberate in, you know, as we set out to build these businesses together. I think it's, you know, it's a lot of opportunity to come on that.
Lloyd, do you want to add anything on Brazil?
Just to help with the breakdown. Last year, we did a bit over $160 million in the consumer business in Brazil, and as you know, that's been growing very strongly. About half of that, just over half, is Limpa Nome. About 20% is PagueVeloz, the payments business. About another 20% is eCred, and about 10% is fraud and other areas of subscription. You can see, you know, as Brian said, the majority is Limpa Nome, but increasingly diversified. The payments business that we acquired with PagueVeloz offers us lots of interesting strategic choices alongside the Limpa Nome business particularly.
Very happy with progress there, and I think in a large market where we've got very strong brand presence, that there's a lot of optionality in that business for us as we go forward.
Thank you.
Okay.
Now we're going to take our next question. Just give us a moment. The next question comes from the line of Simona Sarli from Bank of America. Your line is open. Please ask a question.
Yes, good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. Just probably if you can provide a little bit of granularity on the evolution of your organic growth rate throughout the quarter. Probably an indication also of the exit rate. In particular, if you could focus not only at group level, but also for North America. Thank you.
Hi, Simona. We don't give monthly growth rates. I think probably the best way to answer it is. you know, we grew in line with our expectations in Q1 and Q2, we expect to be in the 4%-5% range. Might round to 5%, might round to 4%, but pretty similar growth rate than, you know, in the range that we had for Q1. Lending criteria was pretty stable after it stabilized, after that hiatus around the banking failures in the U.S. No real discernible trends, I think, is probably the best way to describe it just now. We'll see what the second half brings.
Thank you.
Thanks, Amanda.
Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes from the line of Anvesh Agrawal from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hey, good morning. I got two questions. First, just on the mortgage trends, the volumes were down -32%, and the organic growth was -8%. Just to clarify, -32% is the market volume or your own volume? If that is the case, it seems like there's a massive pricing tailwind. Just some clarification there, and when do you expect that to sort of annualize before? The second question is around the membership trends in the consumer. I mean, as you sort of reach a significant penetration of the free members, the proportion of the adult population in your three big markets, and that sort of sequential growth rate comes down, do you expect your marketing and acquisition costs to come down as well?
I mean, that has seen a sizable pickup over the last four, five years. Are we at a stage where it sort of start to flatten out, going forward?
Hi, Anvesh. On mortgage, the difference between the volume decline, and that's our volume decline, and revenue is really the pass-through of FICO's repricing. I think you see that in all of us and our competitors. That difference is just the pass-on of that pricing. That annualizes in calendar Q1 2024, so our Q4. Typically you see annual price rises put through in that quarter. We don't know what they'll be just now, but they usually come forward at that time. Sequentially, the declines in mortgage are getting a bit better. They were 40 something percent last quarter, 30 something this, they'll be 20 something, I think, next quarter.
Overall, that's a quite a small part of our business, as I mentioned. Then on membership and consumer, I think we've talked, you know, our end goal obviously is to have a relationship with everybody that we have data on the bureau. As we get further through that, the goal is to engage them. Making sure that we have multiple products that can help them in different aspects of their financial lives, like the launch that we've made into auto insurance, the spread out of the different things that we can do to help people save money in the core credit related products.
That's really the goal, and I think there's customer acquisition costs, but there's also member activation costs, being able to maintain that brand awareness with customers into some of those propositions. In the long run, if we can have multiple products in multiple areas and engage consumers, then you're right. The overall activation and acquisition costs comes down and the lifetime value of the consumer goes up. We've got to really build out the product set to get to that point.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes from line of Karl Green from RBC. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yeah, thank you very much. I've got two related questions. Firstly, just on North America, CI, BI, Bureau, Ex-m ortgage. Can you just give a bit of granularity about the respective organic growth trends between CI and BI there? Then relatedly, roughly what proportion of the combined 2% like-like growth was driven by Ascend in the quarter? Thanks.
Okay, the BI bureau grew stronger than the consumer bureau. I mentioned the core bureau was modestly declining. Within that, you've got a strong growth or good growth, actually, from the BI bureau. Prospectively, Sorry, what was your second question, Karl?
Contribution from Ascend.
It's from Ascend. Ascend grew double-digit in the quarter. That continued, but its contribution inside that 2% would be less than 1%. Back to you, Karl.
Do we have a question, Karl?
No, no, that was it. Great. Thanks.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes from a line of Arthur Truslove from Citi. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thanks very much. Yeah, a couple from me, please. First of all, just in EMEA and APAC, and, you know, obviously you've been transforming that business and doing some restructuring. I just wondered, where you think the margins can ultimately go, you know, over the sort of midterm in that line of business following everything that you've done. Then I guess, the second one for me was around Brazil, in particular on the B2B side. I mean, clearly, I guess the run rate has slowed a little bit from where it was in the first half of FY 2023. I just wondered, you know, what the sort of reason for that was, and whether you expect it to accelerate as we get into the second half. Thank you.
Great. Thanks, Arthur. Yeah, in the APAC, we're pleased with the performance there. No change really to the sort of margin targets that we set out. Lloyd, just to be honest here, you know, when we spoke about this.
Yeah, mid to high teens on a, you know, four to five-year time horizon. You'll see us continue to progress from here each year. I think the key to it is scaling those markets that we're now focusing on, you can see that starting to come from the growth rate. That's really the most important thing.
Yeah. Back on Brazil. Now, I don't think you can read anything into the difference. I mean, you know, typically, that we have our strongest quarters in the second half, as we close out the year. I think the growth is still very strong, and we're still significantly outperforming everybody in the market, so we're very pleased with the progress there.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The question comes from the line of James Rose from Barclays. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi there. Thanks. I've got two, please. The first is, could you talk to the countercyclical business lines within the bureau and any signs that those are starting to kick in and help? Secondly, on Brazil, not that we can see it in the numbers necessarily, but are there any signs of tighter credit conditions there impacting the B2B or the consumer side?
Great. Thanks. Brazil, I mean, you know, Brazil has been tougher credit conditions, maybe not to the same extent as we've seen in the U.K. and the U.S., but it's I think when we talked in May, we said, "You know, it hasn't been an easy year from a credit perspective." We've been, you know, doing extremely well based on, you know, the advance in positive data and all the new products that we've been building on the back of that. I think if you just look at the comparator, which is, you know, Boa Vista in the marketplace, we're substantially outperforming them. You know, I don't think we see anything changing from that perspective. If anything, actually, Brazil is now, you know, has the lowest inflation actually.
We're in the rather bizarre position of Brazil and Latin America teaching the developed economies how to get inflation under control. You know, you might start to see interest rates moving in a different direction there much quicker. I, I don't think that there's any change there, and I don't think that there's any sort of phase of further weakening or tightening. It already has been to a certain extent. I think that probably deals with the Brazil one.
On the countercyclical products, I think I would just make the comment that the performance that we've been all throughout FY 2023 and Q1 includes really the contribution from those countercyclical products, particularly in things like analytics, as well as some of the other business units that are really not perfectly correlated with the credit cycle. There's quite a big contribution from that.
Yeah, I think if you think about volumetric businesses, James, you know, the classic countercyclical one is collections, and we haven't seen that pick up. The reason for that is because delinquencies haven't really elevated. I think what you've seen is some other areas of service, the focus, as Brian said, analytics, we saw that really strengthen last year. We commented in the release about the increase of things like affordability services in the U.K., the strong growth in our short-term lending business, Clarity. That tells you that, you know, there are, you know, lending is moving around a bit in the ecosystem as credit terms tighten. Of course, one of the joys of having a broad portfolio as we do, is that we can pick up the demand wherever it lands.
Great. Thanks very much.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our final question for today. The question comes in the line of Oscar Val Mas, JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yes. Good morning, Brian and Lloyd. I have two questions. The first one's really on the insurance marketplace business you're building. Can you just give us some more details on how significant or how large that business can be over the next few years? On that business as well, just to give us more color, the U.S. is quite different to the U.K. in terms of how auto insurance is purchased. Are you seeing anything in the U.S. market changing over time to resemble more the U.K. market? That's the first question, really on auto insurance. The second question is on pricing, and it's something we've discussed over the last few years, you've talked about FICO putting up prices significantly. Your core credit bureau is seeing flat growth.
How should we think about pricing initiatives with your customers, given there's obviously some cost inflation coming through from people in data? Is that a significant conversation you're having with your customers around pricing?
Great, thanks for the question. We'll deal with them in turn. I think on insurance, you're right, it is quite a different marketplace. Compared to when you look at something like the U.K. What I would say is, though, we think that the insurance market in the U.S. is on a journey towards digitization. There's a long way to go.
We're very encouraged with what we see from a number of perspectives. One, consumer demand, which we think is very strong. Our own ability to actually create seamless propositions for consumers, which is much more complicated, given the complexity of the U.S. insurance marketplace, but we're getting there. Three, the willingness of large insurers to actually be part of our panel, and we're seeing really good traction in that and, you know, expect to make further progress. I think this market is going to evolve in a very quickly. I mean, it will obviously evolve over a period of years, but, you know, we do think it's a, it's a very big opportunity, hence the investments we've made in this, and I think we've got a really great position.
In terms of sizing, Lloyd, have we given an estimate?
We have. I mean, clearly, if it's all tied to the transition that you're asking about, if we see a rapid transition to a more digitized market, then the opportunity could be very material. I think, you know, building on Brian's points, you know, we have audience, we have relevance, we have a big auto business, with all of the data associated with it. Over three million consumers on our platform have parked their car in their virtual garage, which gives us permission to talk to them about auto-related products. We've got a, you know, a panel and a journey that can take them through a pretty seamless, low-friction auto insurance journey.
I think we feel, you know, quite positive about the potential of that business. Exactly the pace of it? The direction of travel is very clear. The question really is the pace. You know, we plan to, you know, to be a key part of that ecosystem as it develops.
Just on the pricing?
Yeah, pricing, you know, as we've talked about, you know, we have pricing conversations with our clients. Often, they're part of a big bundle discussion in that, you know, we want to grow our relationship with clients into new product areas. There's always a trade-off between the pass-through of inflation, the pricing of products, and the growth of new innovation revenue. We kind of see it as a single conversation rather than a separated conversation. Clearly, it's easier to have a discussion on price at times of high inflation. You know, you might expect there are more conversations now than there have been in the last few years.
Great. Thanks, both.
Thanks, Oscar.
Thank you.
Thank you. The speakers are done for the questions.
Okay, I think, we don't have any more questions. Thanks everybody for joining today. Thanks for all the questions. Hope you all have a good day, and we look forward to speaking to you again in November for our half year results. Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you all for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.