Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the RELX Results Announcement for the Year to the 31st of December 2020 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question- and- answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star and one on your telephone. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Sir Anthony Habgood. Please go ahead, sir.
Your cast. In what turns out to have been a truly extraordinary year, the whole organization rose to the challenge of maintaining high levels of customer service in hugely changed working conditions, reflecting the quality and dedication of our staff around the world. Throughout, we continued consistently to pursue our strategic priorities, delivering growth in revenue, adjusted operating profit, and cash across our three largest business areas. I hope you will agree with me that this is a good result in what is now about 95% of the revenues of the company. Our exhibitions business was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of COVID-related restrictions, inevitably went into loss, which caused our adjusted earnings per share to be 14% lower than last year at GBP 0.801.
Given the resilience of our three largest business areas, our strong financial position and cash flow, and our confidence in the outlook for the company, we are proposing a full-year dividend of GBP 0.47, an increase of almost 3%. Our long history of strong ESG performance was again enhanced during the year, and I especially commend the actions of Elsevier for the way in which they have supported the scientific and medical response to the pandemic. Researchers and healthcare professionals now have free access to over 50,000 relevant articles, which have been downloaded over 200 million times to date. As you know, this is my last results presentation as Chair of RELX, and I am delighted that Paul Walker will be succeeding me next month. I believe that overall, the company is well-positioned managerially, financially, and strategically as I prepare to hand over to him.
Paul has a strong record of value creation as a FTSE 100 chair and chief executive, has a deep understanding of corporate governance, and brings extensive international experience in sectors relevant to RELX's business, both through his executive and non-executive roles. I believe that he is an outstanding choice to guide the company and its exceptionally talented management team forward to the next level, and I am confident that RELX will continue to prosper under his stewardship. Finally, I would like to thank you all for following and supporting RELX over the past years. With that, I will now hand over to Erik and Nick, who will take you through the results. Thank you.
Thank you, Anthony. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for taking the time to join us on our call today. As you may have seen from our press release this morning, our three largest business areas, which together represented 95% of RELX revenue in 2020, have continued to perform well and all delivered another year of underlying revenue and adjusted operating profit growth. However, the exhibition business was significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We continued to make good operational and strategic progress. We continued to invest behind our strategic priorities, and we continued to build on our strong ESG performance, making good progress on many of our important internal metrics and maintaining or improving our key external ratings.
Early in the year, when the impact of the emerging COVID-19 pandemic on our exhibition business was still uncertain, we took the decision not to try to offset any potential profit shortfall in exhibitions by constraining investment in the strategic priorities of our three largest business areas: STM, Risk, and Legal. Instead, we decided to continue to invest behind the organic development and rollout of increasingly sophisticated information-based analytics and decision tools, and to continue to supplement our organic efforts with targeted acquisitions during the year. Taken together, total revenue for the three largest business areas increased by 2% in 2020, adjusted operating profit was up 4%, and the operating margin increased by 50 basis points.
In the exhibition business, we have focused on serving our customers as well as we can whilst taking the appropriate steps to ensure the future of the business through the accelerated development of digital tools and by adjusting our operating cost structure. Looked at by format, the rate of decline in print revenue roughly doubled in 2020, in part reflecting temporary COVID-19 related disruption to our physical distribution channel, but also reflecting an acceleration in the long-term structural shift from print to digital in many of our markets. Face-to-face revenue was of course impacted severely by COVID-19, as almost all exhibition venues outside Asia were closed for most of the year. Electronic revenue grew 3% on an underlying basis for the group as a whole.
Whilst the transition from electronic reference to electronic decision tools continued to drive growth, this trend was partly offset by a temporary drop in transactional revenue streams in some of our customer markets that were negatively impacted by COVID-19. Let's look at the results of each business area. In STM, underlying revenue growth was 1%. Electronic revenue, which represented 86% of the total, grew 3%, in line with the prior year. Print revenue, which was impacted by distribution issues related to COVID-19, particularly in the first half, declined at roughly double the rate of recent years, taking around one percentage point off the divisional growth rate for the year. In primary research, we launched 115 new journals, of which over 100 were author-paid Open Access titles.
The number of article submissions to our journals grew by over 25% in the year for a total of over 2.5 million submissions, almost double the total number of articles that we received five years ago. The number of articles published grew double digits in the year, and is now more than 40% higher than it was five years ago. We continue to increase our market share of both subscription and Open Access articles while maintaining or increasing our relative quality advantage in each sub-segment. The customer environment for primary research varied by segment and geography. Many corporate segments, particularly life sciences, saw good growth globally. The academic institution subscription segment, which represents roughly 40% of divisional revenue, saw strong growth in some key Asian countries, but varying degrees of budget pressure in other geographies.
We spent more time working customer by customer than in a typical year, often providing a range of alternatives that can help them meet their needs. As a result, at this point in the renewal cycle, the subscription renewal completion rate for the year so far is in line with recent years. Open Access revenue growth accelerated across geographies. In databases and tools and electronic reference, which represents over a third of divisional revenue, we've seen strong new sales in corporate life sciences, driven by the addition of new AI-based tools from Reaxys, and supported by text and data mining capabilities from the acquisition of SciBite. We saw strong growth in research management, including double-digit growth in both SciVal and Pure. Strong growth in health education was driven by increased adoption of digital tools.
In the nursing segment, our remote participation facilities were set up in many colleges during the year. Our digital courseware services and digital simulation training tools grew strongly and were supplemented by the acquisition of Shadow Health in December. We saw an acceleration in growth in many of our digital clinical solutions, driven by continued expansion and geographical rollout of our ClinicalKey suite and strong growth at ClinicalPath, our evidence-based treatment decision support tool. Print books, which now represent less than 10% of divisional revenue, saw a steeper decline than in recent years, largely reflecting disruption to distribution channels during COVID-19-related shutdowns. Going forward, trends in our customer markets may continue to vary somewhat by segment, but overall, we expect another year of modest underlying revenue growth. In Risk, underlying revenue growth was 3% and underlying adjusted operating profit growth was 4%.
Transactional revenue, which represents around 60% of the divisional total, saw a COVID-19 related slowdown in March and April, but has continued to see improved growth since then. Subscription revenue, which represents around 40%, remained resilient overall through the year, albeit with some delays in new business closes and customer implementations. Business Services, which now represents nearly 45% of divisional revenue, was expanded during the year by the inclusion of the Accuity business unit that formerly reported under Data Services. The alignment of this unit with our Business Services financial crime and compliance operations will enable further sharing of technology platforms and data, strengthen our customer value proposition, and accelerate the rollout of new tools.
Whilst recovery has been gradual in some customer segments such as physical retail, hospitality, and travel, many parts of Business Services such as identity verification and fraud prevention returned to double-digit growth before the end of the year. In digital identity, ThreatMetrix continued to perform strongly throughout the year, and with the integration of Emailage largely complete, both businesses have continued to grow in the 30% range. In insurance, representing nearly 40% of the divisional total, our customer markets have seen a steady recovery since the COVID-19 related disruption in March and April. With second half U.S. auto insurance shopping trends in line with recent years. U.S. driving activity recovered to around 95% of the prior year levels by January this year, from a low point of around 50% in April. Claims volumes have followed a similar trajectory.
During 2020, we broadened our data sets in the connected car segment through a growing number of relationships with OEMs, enabling us to provide telematics and vehicle information related services to both insurance carriers and auto manufacturers. In adjacent verticals, we've seen strong growth in life insurance as customers seek alternative data sources and automation of the application and underwriting processes. Outside the U.S., we saw strong growth in the U.K. and China, driven by new product launches and expansion of contributory data sets. In data services, which after the transfer of the Accuity Financial Services business units, represent just over 10% of divisional revenue. We saw continued good growth in petrochemicals while aviation saw the double-digit growth rates at the beginning of the year slowing before turning into declines at the end of the year.
In government, representing around 5% of divisional revenue, strong growth was driven by the continued expansion and rollout of analytics and decision tools. Going forward, in 2021, we expect a year of strong underlying revenue growth with the fundamentals for the majority of our markets in line with pre-COVID-19 trends. In legal, underlying revenue growth was 1%, with underlying adjusted operating profit growth ahead of revenue growth at 7%, reflecting continued efficiency gains. Electronic revenue, now representing 87% of the divisional total, continued to grow 3% in line with the prior year, driven by the development and rollout of legal analytics and new integrated functionality. Print revenue declined in low double digits, steeper than the recent mid-single digit average, mainly due to supply disruption and temporary closure of customer offices, effectively reducing the divisional underlying revenue growth rate for the year by a percentage point.
In North America, which accounts for around two-thirds of divisional revenue, the legal services market saw some COVID-19 related disruption in the early part of the pandemic, with new sales dipping in March and April. As the year progressed, the environment appeared to strengthen again, in the second half of the year, new sales were running ahead of the prior year. In September, we launched Lexis+ in the U.S. It uses machine learning and natural language processing to unite multiple legal research and analytics functions, including advanced search, practical guidance, and brief analysis, all delivered through an upgraded and modernized user interface. It has been fully rolled out in law schools, where it has been very well received. After the initial stage of the commercial rollout to law firms, the customer response has been very positive, with adoption by new customers particularly encouraging.
Going forward, trends in our major customer markets are stable, and we expect another year of modest underlying revenue growth. Exhibitions was significantly impacted by COVID-19 in 2020, and revenue for the year was down by around 70%. The business had a good start to the year, but was severely disrupted from early March. Exhibition venues began to close, and local restrictions were introduced across most of our markets. As a result, we were able to hold only around 170 of the close to 500 face-to-face events that were originally scheduled for the year, with no significant events in Europe or North America this March. Venues reopened in China in June, in Japan in August, and we held a small number of events in a few other countries in the second half. Through the disruption, we have accelerated the rate of digital innovation.
We have enabled both exhibitors and attendees to participate remotely in the physical events that have taken place, which has been particularly useful for international participants. Where physical events could not take place, we experimented with a range of virtual alternatives, adding value for exhibitors and attendees, and enabling us to maintain engagement with industry communities. During the year, we also took action to reduce the ongoing operating cost structure of the business, and Nick will take you through the details of both exhibition revenues and costs in a few minutes. Going forward, the evolving COVID-19 pandemic will continue to impact our ability to hold physical events, making the outlook for the year uncertain. In 2020, we continued to reshape our portfolio through selective acquisitions that support our organic growth strategy. We completed 11 acquisitions for a total consideration of GBP 878 million.
The most significant of which were Emailage and ID Analytics in Risk, and SciBite and Shadow Health in STM. With that, I will now hand over to Nick Luff, our CFO, who will talk you through our results in more detail. I will be back afterwards for a quick wrap-up and our usual Q&A.
Thank you. Exhibitions group revenue was 9% lower. With Exhibitions recording a loss, adjusted operating profit declined by 18% underlying, resulting in an adjusted operating margin of 29.2%. Adjusted earnings per share declined by 15% at constant currency, reflecting the fall in operating profits offset by a lower interest charge. Cash conversion was strong at 97%. Leverage at the period end was 3.3x including leases and pensions, up from 2.5x at the end of 2020 because of the hit to EBITDA caused by the loss in Exhibitions. With the business outside of Exhibitions proving its resilience and continuing to grow, we have been able to increase the full-year dividend by 3% to GBP 0.47.
On the share buyback, we have deployed GBP 150 million when the program was suspended in April, and we have confirmed today that the board does not intend to resume the program this year. Looking at revenue, the three largest business areas, STM, Risk, and Legal, continued to deliver underlying growth. The growth in those three businesses was more than offset by the reduction in revenue from Exhibitions, where we saw an underlying decline of 69%. Overall, group revenues were down 9% underlying. Combined portfolio and cycling effects were a net drag of 1%, whilst currency was neutral, resulting in total reported revenues down 10% for the year. On adjusted operating profit, STM and Risk delivered underlying growth in line with or slightly ahead of underlying revenue growth, with costs carefully controlled in response to the slower revenue growth compared to 2019.
Underlying profit growth was strong in Legal, aided by continued efficiency gains. Portfolio effects were a small drag on profits for STM and a larger one for Legal, but we lost the profit contribution from some software businesses sold in 2019. Risk saw a small net benefit from portfolio changes driven by the profit contribution of recent acquisitions. Exhibitions reported an adjusted loss of GBP 164 million compared to a profit of GBP 331 million in the prior year, with cost reductions not sufficient to offset the drop in revenue. Currency movements were a small benefit to profit growth, mainly driven by the hedging program in STM. Overall, group adjusted operating profit was down 17% to just under GBP 2.1 billion. Turning to margins, although STM's underlying profit growth was in line with underlying revenue growth, margins were higher as they benefited from exchange rate movements, mainly on the hedge book.
Risk and Legal both saw small increases in margin. In Legal, the margin benefit of the strong underlying profit growth was partly offset by dilution from portfolio effects. At the group level, the loss in Exhibitions resulted in a 2.4% reduction in the total margin to 29.2%. Looking at the group level income statement, again, you see the impact of Exhibitions on both revenues and operating profits. Adjusted net interest expense was GBP 160 million, well below the 2019 figure, which included a one-off charge related to an early bond redemption. The effective interest rate on gross debt was 2.1%. Adjusted tax charge was GBP 373 million. The adjusted effective tax rate was 19.5%, benefiting from some non-recurring credits. The rate was still higher than the 17.6% for 2019, which included a larger one-off credit. Adjusted net profit was a little over GBP 1.5 billion, down 16% at constant currency.
At GBP 0.801, adjusted earnings per share was down 15% at constant currency, 14% at reported exchange rate. This next slide shows you what's going on between adjusted and reported profits. Amortization of acquired intangibles increased to GBP 376 million, partly due to new acquisitions, but also including some impairments. We incurred GBP 183 million of one-off costs in Exhibitions that we have treated as exceptional. That's made up of GBP 61 million of costs relating to canceled events, GBP 82 million of restructuring costs, and GBP 40 million of impairments. I'll talk some more about the restructuring later. There was unusual acquisition accounting adjustment relating to some buyout options for a minority interest in Legal, leading to a net acquisition credit of GBP 12 million when that line item is normally a charge. Our venture fund owns a small stake in Palantir, which listed on NASDAQ in September.
Palantir's price more than doubled between listing and the year-end, resulting in a mark-to-market gain, which is reflected in the non-operating credit of GBP 130 million. The net of all that gave reported profit before tax of just under GBP 1.5 billion, down 20%, and reported EPS of GBP 0.635, down 18%. Turning to cash flow, again, you can see the impact of the loss in Exhibitions which flowed through to EBITDA. Group CapEx of GBP 362 million, equivalent to 5% of revenue, in line with the previous year. As I mentioned earlier, cash conversion remains strong at 97%. Interest, tax, and acquisition-related payments were similar to the prior year, and GBP 51 million of the exceptional cost in Exhibitions were paid out in cash. That left total free cash flow of just over GBP 1.2 billion.
Here's how we use that free cash flow, including acquisition spend of GBP 878 million, with the largest deals being Emailage and ID Analytics within Risk, followed by Shadow Health in STM. Total dividend payments were GBP 880 million, and you can also see the GBP 150 million we spent on buying back shares prior to halting the program in April. Overall, net debt at the end of the year was GBP 6.9 billion, GBP 700 million higher than at the end of 2019, but GBP 600 million lower than at the end of June. Leverage, which we calculate in US dollars, was 3.3x including leases and pensions, or 2.9x when you exclude them. Looking forward, we would expect to bring leverage back to our historic range over the next couple of years. Despite the loss in Exhibitions, the group remains highly cash generative, and our priorities for the use of cash are unchanged.
The first of those priorities is organic investment in the business. As I mentioned, that has continued at the same sort of level at around 5% of revenues. Acquisition spend depends on the opportunities that arise. 2020 was a year of higher than average spend, with the two most significant acquisitions, Emailage and ID Analytics, coming early in the year. We have continued to increase the dividend, reflect the long-term profits of the business, and continue to target cover of 2x over the longer term. Due to the loss in Exhibitions, leverage is higher than in the recent past. As I said, we aim to bring that back into the normal range over the next couple of years. The strong cash generation should enable us to do that. Directly, we have used surplus capital to buy back shares.
With the leverage above our normal range, we don't have surplus capital at the moment, hence the decision not to resume the buyback this year. Clearly, the swing to loss in Exhibitions had a significant impact on the group financials for 2020. With no major events in Europe or North America since early March, revenue dropped by a little over GBP 900 million. Operating costs were lower, of course, by about GBP 450 million, in part because we're excluding GBP 61 million of costs related to canceled events, which we have treated as exceptional. With a lower contribution from joint ventures as well, there was a swing of almost GBP 500 million from the profit in 2019 to the loss position in 2020.
As Erik said, there is significant uncertainty on the short-term outlook for the business, and we will seek to manage the costs accordingly, staying flexible with the event program and minimizing commitments to event costs where we can. We have also taken action to reduce the ongoing overhead of the business. Looking back at 2019, indirect costs were about 40% of the overall cost base, so around GBP 400 million. We are aiming for something around 25% lower than that for indirect costs in 2021, and we would expect to sustain that in future years. A little under half of the reduction in indirect costs was achieved in 2020. The one-off restructuring costs to achieve the reduction are GBP 82 million, which is part of the overall exceptional of GBP 183 million. This chart shows you the phasing of Exhibitions revenues in 2020 by quarter and by geography.
For 2021, we currently have scheduled around three-quarters of the number of events we held in 2019, and that would be a higher proportion weighted by size of event. As you would expect, we have been moving events back in the calendar whenever possible. Events are running in Japan right now with some limits on visitor numbers. We have events scheduled for China, Japan, and elsewhere in Asia in Q2, albeit there will be reduced venue capacity in Tokyo from May in the run-up to the Olympics. Outside of Asia, there are very few events scheduled until Q3, and for Europe, not until near the end of that third quarter. The schedule for Q4 is pretty busy with events scheduled across the world. Finally, on ESG, we continue to track our performance very closely with the same rigor as we do our financial performance.
We publish a range of metrics in our annual report and in our corporate responsibility report. I've picked out a few for you here. The decline in our emissions over 10 years is another example of how we drive change in the company, continuously seeking new ways to do better and moving step by step, relentlessly improving with no end point to that improvement. Of course, 2020's emissions level was helped by the switch to remote working, the trend downward is clear. I should add, these are gross emissions, including offset. Emissions for our own operations are already at net zero. With that, I will hand you back to Erik.
Thank you, Nick. Just to summarize what we have covered this morning. In 2020, our three largest business areas continued to perform well, with all three delivering underlying revenue and adjusted operating profit growth. We made further strategic and operational progress and continued to invest behind our strategic priorities, both organically and through acquisition. Going forward, we expect each of our three largest business areas, STM, Risk, and Legal, to deliver another year of underlying revenue and adjusted operating profit growth in 2021. Similar to pre-COVID-19 trends. The timing and pace of recovery in Exhibitions remains uncertain. Finally, I would like to thank Sir Anthony Habgood for his exemplary leadership as Chair of RELX. For over a decade, he has expertly led the board, helped shape the strategic direction of the company, and provided constant and invaluable advice, support, and guidance to me and to the executive team.
With that, I think we're ready to go to questions.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A queue. This will only take a few moments. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the hash key. Once again, please press star one if you wish to ask a question. The first question comes from the line of Katherine Tait from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question. Your line is now open.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, just on the Exhibitions outlook for the year. Appreciate that sort of timetable in terms of when you're currently sort of scheduling things to come through. Can you help us understand how you're thinking about the cost structure for the cost base for this year across the sort of given the considerable uncertainty that you have over whether or not these events are going to run? Are there incremental cost cuts that you would need to do in that case? Are you sufficiently happy that the sort of flexibility within your variable costs will enable you to see through any further difficulties going forward? Secondly, in STM. Good to hear the sort of update on the renewals, and the progress there.
Can you, yeah, just give us a sense of whether or not you're seeing any sort of additional pressure on the pricing of the subscriptions at this point? Obviously, it's been a big focus of investors historically. Balancing that with the Open Access growth that you're seeing, just keen to get a little bit more detail in terms of how the growth is breaking down and how you're anticipating that going into 2021 as well. Then finally, just on Legal, with the launch of Lexis+, can you just kind of give us a little bit more detail in terms of the corporate rollout? Is this being seen as a sort of an upsell from the main subscription business today or is it a sort of additional product?
How should we think about the way that corporates are going to shift towards this product over the next year or so? Thank you.
Katherine, thank you. Just to take your Exhibitions question on managing the costs. I think what we said, if you go back to 2019 as the last pre-COVID year, the cost base is about 60% direct that relates directly to the events themselves and 40% indirect or overhead costs. As we indicated, we've taken action to reduce that overhead cost. It's about GBP 400 million base we had in 2019. We're looking for it to run about 25% lower than that in 2021. Obviously, we made a step towards that last year. The indirect cost is where you have more variability within the year, of course, depending on which events we run. We are looking wherever possible to keep those costs low, to avoid committing too early to those direct costs.
It partly depends on if you can't run an event, how late in the process do you find out you're not going to run that event? Obviously, we're trying that we can to run as many as we can. Generally speaking, the direct cost of the events, we should be able to manage pretty much depending on what runs and what doesn't run. The indirect cost we've taken, the action we've taken, and we should see that cost base come down. Clearly, the overall outlook very much dependent on what revenue ultimately comes in.
Okay. Thank you.
On STM, as I said, in terms of this year's renewals, it appeared that your question was mostly directed at the journal subscription side, which I think I said in my earlier update that with the corporate side, it's gone very well, and we see a strong interest across the world. When it comes to the academic institutional subscription side, we have seen continued strong response in some key Asian countries. There is a varying degree of budget pressure across most other markets, and we have spent a significant amount of time working customer by customer so far during this renewal cycle. At this point, when it comes to completion, we're in a similar place to the last few years. You asked what does that mean going forward for 2021.
I think that we're likely to see a similar type of pattern for the near future, but then in the medium term, it's unclear to us how this will develop. You also asked what's happening with the Open Access side and with future budget allocations. As a service provider to the research information industry, we are very happy to provide our customers with whichever combination of services that they are looking for, and we work with each one to make sure that we come up with a set of alternatives for them to consider that help them meet their needs, and that we do so in a way that provides higher quality to them than other major providers, and at a lower effective cost to them than other major providers.
We expect to continue to gain slight market share on the subscription side as we have over the last few years, and we expect to continue to gain market share in the Open Access segment faster, just like we have over the last few years. When it comes to legal, you asked about Lexis+. This was rolled out commercially basically in September in the U.S., and this is an integrated solution where a customer can choose different content sets or different modules, different tools, different analytics to use on that integrated solution. And they can also vary their usage or the number of people using and how they use it, and the pricing is set up accordingly.
What we have seen so far is that new customers that come new or customers that have been away for a while, they overwhelmingly choose Lexis+ as the solution set and a combination of content sets and analytics on top of that. When it comes to existing customers, we are only in the early stages of rolling out and launching alternative conversion upgrades for those customers, but the response has been very positive.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Adam Berlin from UBS. Please ask your question. Your line is now open.
Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking three questions, please. The first question is, can you give any commentary on the run rate of RBA underlying revenue growth into Q1? I think you talked about after the Q3 results that it was kind of running at around a little bit better than half the normal run rate. Any update on that? Maybe specifically, you said in your commentary, Erik, that the transaction revenue was down in March, April, and have been recovering. Is that transaction revenue now up kind of year-on-year, or is it still down year-on-year? First question on RBA. A question on STM. It's a quite remarkable improvement in EBIT margins this year, given the pressures on the top line. Just wanted to understand what's driving that.
Is that just efficiency gains, or is that to do with this mix shift between print and electronic that's helping the margin? Do you think this level of margin can be sustained? Just some commentary around that would be helpful. Thirdly, you mentioned the gain on the Palantir stake. Can you just update us what's your current equity stake in Palantir? Thanks very much.
Okay. Adam, I'll just take the second and third of those and let Erik comment on the risk dynamics. The STM margins, as you would have seen from the numbers, the underlying revenue growth and the underlying profit growth are actually in line with each other, and the portfolio changes weren't significant. What actually was driving the margin improvement was currency, mainly from the hedge book. It's actually the business is a bit more biased towards dollars in terms of revenue, and a bit more towards GBP and EUR in the cost base. We do hedging to smooth and manage those currency movements. The decline in GBP and EUR a few years ago is now just sort of working its way through the numbers. That's what's given the margin differential from 2020 to 2019.
Going forward, I think we've said in the guidance we are expecting operating profit growth to be slightly ahead of revenue growth, which will be marginally beneficial to margins. You've got to build in portfolio changes, whatever they do. Of course, currency, we don't know. That can go either way. We're not specifically targeting moving margins one way or the other. Our objective is more focused on the profit growth relative to the revenue growth.
Sorry, Nick.
Your question on Palantir. We own, in rough numbers, about 10 million shares in Palantir, and you can see that in the investments line within the balance sheet. It's a great investment that our venture fund made in 2006. It's a nice thing to have, and the revaluation gain that you see in 2020 was good, and Palantir's price is up since the year end as well. In overall RELX terms, it's not enormous.
Sorry, Nick, just to clarify, if the currency stays where it is today, around 137, would you expect the STM margin to revert back toward where it was in 2019? Just help us kind of work that through.
Yeah, I would. Directionally, a stronger Sterling relative to the Dollar would be, over time, would be a drag on margins in STM. Because of the hedge program, it takes quite a while to come through. It's a little bit difficult. You have to have all the mix of currencies to say what exactly will happen in one year. Net-net, the pressure from stronger Sterling relative to Dollars is downward on margins.
Okay. On the Risk question, what you saw, broadly speaking, during the second half, was that the transactional revenues continued to strengthen, and we finished the year and ended up getting into this year with many of the transactional growth rates that we described before, that some of them have gotten back up into double digits growth in some of our stronger segments. Some of the big trends, both business services and insurance, as we leave last year and to this year, look similar to what they have looked like in the past. Some of them are even stronger, such as digital identity and so on. On the other hand, as I mentioned, there are certain sub-segments, some where we have subscription base slightly larger, such as aviation, that have been impacted by COVID-19 and continue to be impacted by it.
We have slight offsets in physical retail, hospitality, travel, as well as in sort of the aviation segment, that are not quite back where we have been in the past. Some are running better than they used to in the past, and some are slightly behind. That's why when we look at the outlook for this, we say that at this moment, as we can see six weeks into the year, if you look at this compared to where we were prior to COVID-19, there are some differences. Broadly speaking, it looks pretty similar.
Thanks.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Tom Singlehurst from Citi. Please ask your question.
Thank you for taking the question. It's Tom here from Citi. Just a couple, actually. Firstly, STM, we had a bit of a false alarm, or at least it's a decimal point issue maybe. The nine-month accelerated to 2%, then obviously decelerated to 1% for the full year, and you've mentioned print was most likely the sort of the driving force behind that. I was just wondering, just in general, with print weighted to the second half, should we end up with a profile where you typically deliver better growth for STM in the first half and then consistently see a slowdown into the second half because of the weighting to print, which presumably continued to be under pressure? That's the first question.
The second question, I appreciate there's uncertainty for 2021, but can you just give us your best guess of when you'll be back to 2019 levels of activity and exhibitions? I ask that on the basis that your best guess is probably better than my best guess. Thank you.
Okay. On the first question there regarding STM growth rates. It is true, print has historically been weighted towards the second half. That has been the case for many years, which means that on average, you would expect that to, as long as it keeps declining, have a slightly larger impact on the second half. That happened this year as well. On the other hand, the print ratio in the division keeps going down, and hopefully as the declines are stabilizing again, it should become a smaller and smaller issue as we go forward. When it comes to Exhibitions, Nick?
Tom, well, as you say, it is a guess. Clearly when we're able to operate, where we're able to operate, whether there'll be any restrictions, what impact there is on international travel and so on. I think we are in the calendar for this year. We have got by number about three-quarters of the events we ran in 2019. It's higher, the hard portion of that, if you weighted it by size of event. It's not that dramatic a decline. Clearly there could be some revenue attrition. We would expect some revenue attrition on those shows that we do run, but that's difficult to predict. 2022, we won't have the Olympic disruption in Tokyo. We will talk about some of the 2020 events in 2021. Indeed, we end up with more venue capacity in Tokyo, that will help us.
How the rest of the portfolio evolves around the world, it's difficult to predict, and we'll have to see how we go. I suspect your guess is as good as mine, as you mentioned.
That's very clear. Maybe one more sort of follow-up on Exhibitions. Very simply, is it better that an event takes place this year, even if it's massively under capacity, just to keep the brand going? Or is it better just to not run them if they're not going to be running at full capacity? Is there any tension there between what's good for you and what's good for the customers, ultimately, is what I'm asking?
Yeah, it's a fair question. We would actually do what we think is best strategically, that means what's best for the customer. Even if financially you might be better off not running an event at all because you can save more cost than the revenue you lose sort of thing, our bias would be towards running the event if we can. That's the better thing to do for the customer in the longer term. We'll have to see how it evolves, but that's definitely our bias as we look at the events. What matters, of course, is the event something that the customer values, is there an audience there that they want to in.
Even with smaller attendee numbers, the quality of the audience, if the companies coming are sending more senior people generally, even if it's fewer people, you can still get a very positive show and very good feedback from exhibitors. The bias is definitely to run the event if at all possible.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Nick Dempsey from Barclays. Please ask your question. Your line is now open.
Good morning, guys. I've got three questions left. First of all, when I listened to your comments, Erik, on 2021 for STM, you're saying that renewals for journals have been pretty normal overall. Print's smaller in the mix and has an easy comp. Momentum seems good in databases and tools and e-learning. Could we hope for a slightly better rate of revenue growth in 2021 at STM than we saw in 2011 to 2019? Second question, just on Exhibitions, can you talk to us about conversations that you've been having with potential exhibitors in geographies outside of Asia? Do you get the sense there is a lot of pent-up demand? Do your customers talk about issues with raising budget to come to an Exhibition, even if the sales teams are keen to come? Just some color there.
The third question, just on change in working capital in 2021. Presumably, when you do run exhibitions in the second half, many of your customers will never have had their cash refunded from 2020. We will get a negative impact on change in working capital there. I suppose also you could hope for more forward bookings in the second half of 2021. Just interested in how that all balances out for change in working capital in 2021.
On STM, the outlook for 2021. As you said, there are places where we are hoping for slight improvements in 2021, and as you said, can we hope for it being even better going forward? Of course, we always hope is not a strategy, we need to make sure that we work our way through every business segment, every product, every product launch, every product expansion, every customer one at a time to try to continue to deliver increased value and therefore drive gradual improvement in the growth rate in STM over time. We do have to acknowledge that a large part of our academic institution market, they are under a different range of budget pressures now from what they would have been in an average year in the time period that you described.
That is going to make it slightly harder for us to accelerate in the near term. We do work with each one of our customers to make sure that they are in a position where they can continue to use our tools in the right way for them, given the situation that they're going through, so that we are positioned to get back to all of us growing, hopefully post-pandemic world, and therefore hope for something better afterwards.
Nick, on your question on Exhibitions and the pent-up demand, we are in very regular dialogue with the major exhibitors, particularly as we are moving events around in the calendar and moving them back in the calendar. That dialogue, there's a very high level of engagement, and that tells us that the exhibitors are very interested in when the event is going to take place. They want the event to take place. In that sense, the demand is there. As you say, clearly people have saved money from not coming to events in prior years, but what matters to them is does coming to the event when it's running again add value? They'll make a rational commercial decision.
As long as we are providing the value of being there and the commercial value in the contact with customers and the sales impact that has, I think every confidence that the exhibitors will want to be there and will come back. Your question on working capital, you're right, there was some effect of because obviously the schedule of events in Q1 and some would say in Q2 this year is much thinner than normal. That did have some effect on deposits, although many have been rolled over, of course, from last year. In relative terms, it's not huge. We actually did 97% cash conversion. It was actually higher, notwithstanding that dynamic, actually higher overall group cash conversion. If you look at the end of this year, there should actually be a bit of help from
If the schedule of events in Q1 and Q2 2022 and the bookings for those is busier than we were at the end of last year going into this year. These are relatively small numbers in group terms, and I'm not expecting anything dramatically different on cash conversion overall for 2021.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Patrick Wellington from Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question.
Yeah. Morning, everybody. A couple of questions. First of all, on STM, I think you gave us the number of article submissions at two and a half million. Can you tell us how many were published? I think it was half a million last time. Just stepping back on the STM business, as you say, the number of articles published has, I think, doubled over the last five years. Yet your growth is 2% per annum. Are you not sharing sufficiently, would you say, in the growth of this industry? Are you being too good to your customers? Will that dynamic change with Open Access? Do you think that the shift towards read and publish deals, where you're going to get paid on article volume growth as opposed to the reading, will be beneficial to the underlying growth rates of the business?
Last sort of element on STM, picking up on something I think Katherine Tait said at the beginning, which is that your volume of renewals, as you say, has been pretty good at the start of the year. Would you say that the mix in terms of pricing against that volume has been as good? Finally, on STM, would you say that your relations with your customers have improved? Normally, at this time of year, we get one or two libraries around the world on the academic journal side saying, "We've cut our deal with Elsevier." It's been very notable this year, the dog that doesn't bark, that that hasn't been the case, and that actually you seem to be, as you say, signing deals quite well.
Do you think there's been a big step forward, maybe over the last two years, in terms of your relationships with your STM customers? Then finally, one more just on legal. Nick, a couple of years ago, you told us that legal organic revenue growth and profit growth wouldn't be quite so out of line, with the profit growth so much faster than the revenue growth. Actually, if you look at the table at the back and you look at the result this year, it's been pretty much the same relationship, +1%, +7%. What should we expect going forward? Will there continue to be that sort of notable difference? Thank you.
Okay. Let me try to go through those from the beginning here. STM articles, just to make sure I'm clear on this, number of submissions to the company over the last five years have almost doubled. Number of articles published over that time period have grown a bit over 40%. The total number of articles published in the year, a little over, now over 550, actually, it's slightly over 560,000 articles. That's the growth rate we have seen in the year, and on articles published.
You asked about the question of that growth is higher than our revenue growth, and I think that's exactly the point of the strategy that we are pursuing in the primary research publishing market, illustrated there with the unit growth, which is that we want to provide higher quality, higher volume with a improving sort of value and price ratio per unit. Every single year for the last now 15 years, at least, we have tried to drive for an effective cost per article published, effective cost per article access or cost per article used for the majority of our customers going down every year. That is actually our strategy. When it comes to, you said the question of what does that mean for when we have an increase in Open Access, which is where revenue is priced per article on a more explicit basis.
We believe that our customers are under varying degrees of budget constraints in the primary research market. As a provider of services to them, we are open to servicing them under any business model and any publishing model that they request from us. Our approach in each one is the same, that we should do higher quality and lower effective price over time. We don't believe that there's a fundamental advantage or disadvantage financially to providing service under one model or another. When it comes to the question of mix this year, you said contract renewal completion rate for the academic subscriptions are at the same rate as before.
You're absolutely accurate in pointing out that in some parts of the world, in many parts of the world outside of Asia, there is budget pressure on some of our customers, many of our customers, and therefore, among the range of options and choices that we are talking to them about, some of them have opted for solution sets and packages that in the near term are slightly less expensive or lower revenue growth that we would have had in a typical year over the previous 10-year period that you referred to.
I think that that's why, at this point, we look at the overall situation for the company or for STM for this year, that the outlook is similar to previous years, because we also have many sub-segments where the current growth rate, the current spend growth, is significantly higher than it has been over the last decade or so. In particular, in corporate life sciences and medical education and other types of research management and digital tools that are growing often into double digits. If you add it all up, beyond primary research, where we are today in terms of the outlook for the year, at the beginning of the year, it is very similar to what we've seen in the last two years, but there are some ups and downs within that. You also asked about the relationship.
We have worked very, very hard to try to stay close with our customers and interact with them directly. On your question, which ones speak up publicly, that is something that's entirely up to our customers to decide when they feel that they want to express their views in public and when they want to do it directly with us. We prefer to spend our time working with them directly in trying to understand their issues, their concerns, their priorities, and help them reach their objectives in a way that works for them economically. I guess that in a situation like this, when everybody's having a slightly unusual year and facing different kinds of pressures, if you work very, very intensively with many of your customers, we would hope that that would mean that they think that their relationship is gradually improving with them.
To your question on Legal, Patrick, and the differential between profit growth and revenue growth, you're right. I mean, obviously there was a decent differential in 2020. Not quite as high as it were when we could go back into 2016, 2017, 2018. We had the differential between profit growth and revenue growth was eight, nine and even 10%. It's narrowed a bit. I think we're still strategically looking to improve the margins in Legal over time. Clearly, any one year depends on FX and portfolio changes and the like. Maintaining that differential, or a differential between profit growth and revenue growth is very much what we're trying to do. I think it's very hard to sustain big differentials for a long time. We have gone through that period now of getting off of the old platforms and the taking out the dual running costs.
We are still focused on controlling the cost carefully, automating processes, doing things in a more cost-effective way. It is our objective to maintain a differential. It may not be quite as big as we've had in recent years, and it has narrowed a bit. We're still trying to maintain some sort of differential there.
That's great. forensic recall of the questions, Erik. Well done. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Matthew Walker from Credit Suisse. Please ask your question. Your line is now open.
Thanks very much. I've got three as well, please. The first is on Lexis+. If you're an existing customer, what kind of price uplift do you pay for the Lexis+? Second question is, you've taken 25% out of the indirect cost base on Exhibitions. Does that signal that you think that there will be a sort of permanent diminution or deterioration in the revenue for Exhibitions? Even when it recovers, it won't get back to 2019 levels, or do you intend at some point to put that cost back in? Finally, on Risk, I guess maybe you had 3.5% growth or whatever it was in Q4. Can you just explain the building blocks for Risk to get back to more normal pre-COVID levels of growth in 2021 from that Q4 level?
Finally, thanks very much to the Chairman, who's been really exceptional.
On Lexis+, it is not a direct replacement with a price uplift. It is actually a set of integrated solutions that can be linked and integrated with machine learning, artificial intelligence links and so on. Pricing for each customer is going to reflect the services they use, how much they use it, and also to some extent, the value that they derive from it. Growth in revenue per customer is largely going to be driven by the increased uptake of the analytics products which Lexis+ facilitates. It's a very different way of looking at using a legal information tool, and it will be priced differently because of that in terms of the different components and usage, and the user base. It's modular in a very different way. Not clear what that will mean for each customer. It depends on what they opt to
Matthew, your question on Exhibitions and indirect costs. Yeah, that's something we're always trying to do across all of our businesses, make sure our operations are as cost-effective as possible. That's what gives us the resource and the capacity to put behind new market entry, new product development, et cetera. That would have happened in Exhibitions anyway. We did have a new leader come into the business, Hugh Jones, who previously in our Risk division, has taken on the CEO position in Exhibitions. He's bringing fresh thinking to it. The situation has given him an opportunity to accelerate things that he perhaps would have done over a period of time. Bring forward some of the restructuring, creating a leaner, quicker organization. We've also reviewed the portfolio of events and removed some of the smaller ones.
That's an ongoing process that would be happening anyway as well. Over time, of course, we'll launch new events. That will evolve. The step change in indirect costs, we expect that to be sustainable, and we will continue to work on those and make sure we're as efficient as possible.
Growth. When it comes to how it looks at the beginning of 2021 and the trends we're seeing at the market now, I think we look particularly how things were trending right at the end of the year and early in this year. I think that's what's behind the outlook statement we've made for this year. We have not tried to go back as I think you do mathematically, to figure out what was there for the second half or the third quarter or the fourth quarter. We look at the trends that we're seeing towards the end of the year and into the beginning of this year. As we've said that in many of our business services segments, fraud prevention, identity, and so on, we're back up to growing double digits, with digital identity tools growing even faster than that.
When it comes to insurance, shopping behavior is coming back to the kind of growth rate we saw before, even though driving patterns are still behind, but gradually coming up. Offsetting that, of course, is slight softness still in some of the segments that we mentioned before, in particular subscription things in aviation and so on. We take all that together, that's what's behind the current outlook for the year.
One final quick follow-up for you, Erik, is have you had any thoughts about selling or merging the Exhibitions business?
Well, as you might imagine, a company of this size as we are, we review every single one of our four business areas as well as all the major subunits each year, both internally and with the board. We look at what they do today, their position in the group and their future strategy. Exhibitions is not any exception to that. We do that every year. As Nick said, at the end of 2019, we moved over one of the most senior executives from Risk over to the Exhibitions business. We did that because we believe that over the next five to 10 years, the exhibition industry would go through a significant digital transformation that would increase the value that the industry participants get from that industry.
We believed that RELX will be very well positioned to support that or perhaps even to lead that transformation because of our knowledge in how to build out content databases, develop sophisticated analytics, and to leverage the very sophisticated and powerful technology platforms that we already have in the company that Exhibitions can use for free. As the pandemic developed, of course, we have shifted our attention to supporting the customers during the pandemic and during the recovery, and there are many people who believe that the pandemic will accelerate that digital transformation trend in the industry. That believe that by the time that face-to-face events come back, that the industry will be much further down that path already, and therefore that RELX will be positioned in a much better place than before the downturn.
On the other hand, it's very possible that that does not happen at all, and we do not believe that while we're in the middle of pandemic, you should focus on trying to make that kind of call or that kind of decision. Instead, we are focused on the question of how do we support our customers right now with the best value we can, and how do we accelerate digital transformation to the highest value to our customers, and how do we make sure that we're completely ready to recover when exhibition venues open in most of the world while keeping the cost structure in line or as close to in line as the revenue outlook as we can.
Therefore, that's where we are on the question of that, of the role of Exhibitions, and we believe that it is probably very similar discussion that is taking place in other exhibition owners around the industry. I don't think therefore that you are going to see significant structural shift at the moment while you're in the middle of a pandemic.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Matti Littunen from Bernstein. Please ask your question. Your line is now open.
Good morning. Two questions. The first one on Exhibitions. You mentioned that there was material virtual event revenue for the first time. Could you give us a bit of color on that? Is this coming mainly from attendees or like for the physical events, is it mostly coming from the companies that would have been exhibitors? Is there any significance of the, for example, data-driven lead generation revenue involved? The other question on Risk & Business Analytics, with the Democrats now back in charge, the FTC is again making noises about data brokers. I know LexisNexis Risk Solutions is not technically a data broker, do you see any kind of changes in the regulatory environment for Risk & BA going forward? Thank you very much.
Matthew, it's Nick. On the Exhibitions question, virtual events, I think it's fair to say that we are still experimenting with different revenue models and different formats of virtual events, seeing what exhibitors find helpful, what attendees find helpful, where they see value, what they're willing to pay for. Most of the revenue generation still is biased towards exhibitors. Obviously if you're talking consumer events, then it's more based on attendees. Our more traditional B2B events, it's exhibitors, but in different revenue models, whether directly linked to lead generation or around advertising and promotion, or meeting generation and so on. Still, I would say an experimentation phase, but still focused on revenue from the exhibitors who are the people who derive the most direct value from being at the event. On the question on.
On Risk, as you know, we've been in the risk and data industry for many, many years, have seen quite a fair amount of change in terms of regulatory frameworks, compliance rules, primarily in the U.S., but also in other geographies. While on the surface, increased regulation and complexity might seem that it could be negative to people actually serving customers with information, database analytics like us, I actually believe that it also provides an opportunity because the harder it is to use information, the harder the penalties for incorrect use, the larger the compliance requirements, the more the broad range of customers that we serve need help in order to protect them and to take the right decisions in terms of how to use the data information, how to get value from the existing data.
I think that we are also well-positioned to capture that opportunity to help them do better by adjusting quickly and doing it across our customer industry segments, so that they all don't have to do it at the same time individually, but rather companies like us can then be stepping in and help them comply and help them get the value while following the new regulations. I'm not making any predictions of what exactly will change in regulation. What is clear is that it will continue to evolve. Regulation will continue to change. It will continue to get more complex and most likely diverse. We see that partly as a challenge and partly as an opportunity to help our customers today.
Very helpful. Thank you both.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Konrad Zomer from ABN AMRO-ODDO. Please ask your question. Your line is now open.
Hi, good morning, gentlemen. It's Konrad Zomer, ABN AMRO. Two questions, please. The first on exhibitions. I would guess that most of the cost base is variable instead of fixed, and the 25% reduction suggests that that may be true. Can you share with us what that split is in your opinion? If 2021 was to work out to be another difficult year for events, how much further do you think you could and would be willing to reduce the cost base? My second question, did I hear you say, Nick, you owned 10 million shares in Palantir? If that's true, then that reflects a value of about $350 million, which is more financially than I thought you owned in the company. I might have misheard. I apologize if I did. Thank you.
Konrad, you heard correctly. In round numbers, that's roughly how many shares that we have in Palantir. The stake is marked to the value of the shares at the end of the year in our balance sheet. As you say, the share price has been very volatile, the share price is higher now than it was at the end of December. Your question on Exhibitions and variable and fixed costs. I would say the philosophy we have is that no cost is fixed. All costs can be managed over time. I would, and I gave these numbers earlier. If you go back to 2019, this was the last normal year, if you like.
The overall cost base, which then was about GBP 1 billion, is split roughly 60/40 between direct costs that relate directly to the events that you're running, so hiring the hall and generating the audience and marketing costs and things like that. 40% is indirect costs or overhead costs, so the cost of your own people and offices and so on. When we talk about the 25% reduction through the restructuring we've done, that is referring specifically to the indirect costs and the actions we're taking there. The direct costs, as I said earlier, managing those, essentially, they do vary with the events you run much more readily. Clearly, at some point, you have to make some commitments. We're seeking to minimize those commitments with the uncertainty over the event schedule.
We'll have to see how that pans out for later in the year when most of the events are now scheduled. Overall, it's a quite short-term flexible cost base for that 60%. The other 40% on the indirect cost takes time to manage.
Yeah. Very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The last question comes from the line of Sami Kassab from Exane. Please ask your question. Your line is now open.
Thank you, good morning, everyone. It's Sami at Exane. Three questions, please. The first one in STM. What is the share of revenues from Open Access in 2020? I think it was high single digit last year. Have you crossed the 10% mark or will you cross it this year, perhaps? Secondly, on exhibition. Can you comment on the revenue attrition for shows currently taking place in China and Japan? To me, Japan looks like it's down 50% plus. Is that indeed what you're seeing there? Is that what we should expect for Europe or the U.S. as well for the shows to take place later? Lastly, on Risk, could you please elaborate on the revenue side and the growth trends for two sub-segments of the division, namely the international division in insurance and business services, as well as the cyber fraud solutions.
How big are they, and what's their current growth rate, please? Thank you.
On the STM side, you were fairly accurate when you described where we are in terms of the share of Open Access of the primary research sub-segment of STM. In terms of article counts, we're now into double digits share of our total articles. When it comes to the revenue share, on the margin there, it is becoming slightly less precise because we have a few more of these overall customer agreements where you have subscription and a certain number of Open Access articles or things included in an overall spend umbrella, and it's a bit about how you attribute on the edge there. I think the way you described it is actually very accurate. I think you said last year were high single digits and perhaps are we crossing into double digits or are we about to do that?
That is exactly probably how many of us would describe it, depending on exactly how you would distribute revenue in combined deals. As you have heard, the number of articles received is growing very quickly, and therefore the number of articles published and the revenues are growing faster, of course, in open access for us than for many other industry participants, as well as growing faster for us here than the subscription segment, even though the subscription segment is also growing as well. Sami, your question on exhibitions and revenue attrition. At the moment, we're running events in Japan and in Russia. We actually haven't had any in China for a few weeks, just the way the calendar happened to work out. China is open, the venues are open. The revenue picture for those events is very wide. There are restrictions in Japan.
You can't have more than 5,000 people at an event at any one time. Clearly, the bigger events are being impacted by that restriction, smaller events less so. The variability and the range of revenues are very broad. The extent to which the audience or the exhibitor base for an event is international obviously plays into it. That 50% you mentioned in terms of exhibitor numbers is probably a fair guide for what's going on, and revenue would broadly follow that. I don't think you can read anything into what that means for other geographies, what it means for events at a different time later in the year in other parts of the world. I really wouldn't encourage you to extrapolate it. I think the uncertainty, you can't read too much into what we're seeing in one particular geography at a few events.
We'll have to see what happens. Your other question on Risk. International revenues in insurance and business services are still growing well. They're ahead of the overall average for the division, and that's continued through 2020. They had some disruption to transactional revenues in the same way as the division as a whole, but continue to run well and ahead of the domestic U.S. revenues in both insurance and business services. Fraud prevention, cyber fraud prevention, that is a very strong sub-segment that is growing well into double digits. It depends on what exactly you count as cyber fraud. Fraud prevention and identity verification is one of the stronger parts, and that's come back strongly, quickly.
How big are these two sub-segments, roughly?
If you're taking the business services before we put Accuity into it, which is a more international business, and insurance, I guess they're about 5% plus of those two sub-segments. The fraud is a big part of the business services. The cyber fraud prevention is a reasonably big part. It depends how you categorize the product. Fraud prevention is a big part of the business services segment.
Thank you very much, gentlemen.
Thank you. We just received one last question from Rajesh Kumar from HSBC. Please ask your question. Your line is now open.
Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Just in terms of thinking about new investments in various products as you look ahead in a post-COVID world, what are the areas where you're most excited about? The second one is a quick follow-up on STM. You've provided quite a lot of color in terms of how renegotiations are progressing. Can I request you to give some more color on if the renegotiations are better on the corporate side? Was it the library, academic libraries, or are there any differences by geography or segment that we should bear in mind when thinking about the future?
Yes. Let me answer the last one first. It's very easy. There is a difference between corporate and academic segments. There are also significant differences between the different geographies and also between different types of institutions within those sub-segments. Overall, corporate is currently, in terms of its discussions and renewals, stronger, and we're particularly strong in the largest corporate segment , which is life science-related industry where we have seen strong demand from a wide range of our tools and products. On the first question, I just want to make sure I understood it. When you talked about new investment in products, were you asking across the company or did you ask specific? I didn't quite hear. Were you specifically focusing on one of the divisions?
No, across the company. What things are exciting?
Yeah. I believe that the most exciting general opportunity for this company is the transition that we're going through and continuing to go through of moving from electronic reference information, reference tools, databases, to more sophisticated, higher value-add analytics and decision tools where you can work with a customer group or an industry group to actually identify and measure the results they get from using different types of analytics, and actually measure the value and provide an increasing value through those broader data sets, more sophisticated analytics and new technologies. We look at driving in that direction across all our market segments and all our four divisions. We have gone the furthest down that path, of course, in the risk divisions. We've been active longer. We have built up the technology capability there earlier, and it's very sophisticated and very powerful.
We have leveraged that into the other divisions, and we're primarily building out the solutions that the more sophisticated analytics organically. Sometimes we are also adding acquisitions when it supports those organic growth strategies, and where we are the natural owner, it directly fits the analytical build-up that we've done internally. That transition of continuing to invest organically, primarily in analytics and decision tool products many of the new things, more advanced machine learning, artificial intelligence tools, that is definitely a primary area for investment.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you. This was our last question. Please continue with your closing remarks.
I would just like to thank you all for joining us this morning on this slightly unusual full year results review for us. I look forward to seeing you in person at some point in the future, and hopefully that will happen at some point over the next year or so. Thank you again for taking the time and for joining us today.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.