Good morning, and welcome to the Equifax Incorporated Annual Meeting of Shareholders. We apologize for the delay and we thank you for your patience. Without further ado, I would now like to introduce the first presenter, Mr. Mark Feidler, Chairman of the Board for Equifax.
Good morning, and welcome to the Equifax 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I'm Mark Seidler, Independent Chairman of the Board of Directors, and I will preside over the meeting. I would also like to start by apologizing for our delayed start, but we were experiencing some technical difficulties. We have roughly the same number of participants, so it appears that people got the message and have been very patient and we appreciate that. At this time, I call the meeting to order.
First, let me address some housekeeping matters that are unique to this virtual meeting format. On the meeting website, you will see a meeting agenda along with rules of conduct and our proxy materials. I invite you to refer to those materials as we proceed today. If you are a shareholder and logged in today using your 16 digit control number, you will also see a Q and A button on the lower right hand side of the meeting website. If you click on this button, you can submit questions to be answered later during the Q and A portion of the meeting.
In addition, shareholders who have not yet voted or wish to change their prior vote also have the ability to vote during today's meeting by clicking on the voting button on the lower right hand side of the meeting website and following the instructions. I am joined today by members of our Board of Directors and our senior leadership team, who are all participating remotely. The other participants in today's meeting include Mark Begore, Chief Executive Officer and Lisa Stockard, Assistant Secretary. A representative, Broadridge is serving as the independent Inspector of Election for this meeting. The Inspector of Election has taken the oath of office, which will be filed with the minutes of this meeting.
We have a list of shareholders of record as of March 5, 2021 available for inspection during the meeting via a materials link on the meeting website. Following the business portion of this meeting, our CEO will provide a brief presentation and then we'll conduct a question and answer session with shareholders. During the Q and A period, a representative Ernst and Young will be available to respond to appropriate questions regarding the company's financial statements. Please note that only questions pertinent to the meeting matters will be answered today, subject of course to our meeting time constraints. In the interest of time, questions that are substantially similar may be grouped and answered together to avoid repetition.
I will now ask the secretary to report on whether a quorum is present.
Thank you. The Inspector of Election has certified that a quorum is present.
Thank you. This meeting is now duly convened for the purpose of transacting business properly before it and the polls are open. The next order of business is voting on the matters described in the proxy statement to the extent they are properly presented. The first proposal is the election of 10 directors for a 1 year term. The nominees are listed in your proxy materials.
The second proposal is an advisory vote to approve named executive officer compensation. The 3rd proposal is the ratification of the appointment of Ernst and Young as our independent auditor for 2021. The Board recommends a vote for each of the director nominees and for each of these proposals. If you are a shareholder and have not already done so, you may vote at this time by clicking on the voting button on the meeting website and following the instructions. If you have already sent in your proxy card or voted by telephone or over the Internet, there is no need to vote today unless you wish to change your vote.
We will now pause for 60 seconds to allow time for voting on the meeting website. I declare that the polls are now closed. The secretary will now report on the preliminary voting results.
Mr. Chairman, the Inspector has provided us with a preliminary report on the tabulation of ballots and informed us that the 10 nominees for director have been elected, the vote to approve named executive officer compensation has passed, and Ernst and Young's appointment as independent auditor for 2021 has been ratified.
Thank you. The final voting results will be filed with the SEC. Since there is no further business, I declare the meeting to be officially adjourned. We will now proceed with the informal portion of the meeting. At this time, I would like to ask our CEO, Mark Begore, to provide a brief presentation regarding the company.
A Q and A period will follow his presentation. Mark?
Thank you, Mark. Mark Begore here, CEO of Equifax. I'm energized to give you a brief update on the company, and the slides will be on the screen. Equifax is a leading data analytics and technology company. We've made a lot of progress in the last 3 years following the cyber event in 2017 to really rebuild Equifax and really reposition Equifax for our leadership position in our marketplace.
Our differentiated data, our leading identity and fraud solutions, the new Equifax cloud native technology and data fabric, our focus on new products, best in class analytics, industry leadership and security are all levers that we're using to continue to grow Equifax going forward. We had a very strong 2020 that provides real momentum as we move into 2021. Our 2020 revenue was up 17% with 23% growth in the 4th quarter. Our revenue was $4,000,000,000 in 20 20 was our first time over $4,000,000,000 and the highest organic growth rate on record at Equifax. The Q4 was our 4th straight quarter of double digit revenue growth with 11% core growth in the 4th quarter.
We've made great progress on our focus on moving our technology and data to the cloud and that is continuing to progress in 2021. We've expanded our product resources and focus on new products leveraging the cloud and we've been reinvesting our 2020 outperformance and future growth, including with some acquisitions. So we're excited about the momentum of the company and the investments that we're making in our future. 2020 was a strong year for our business units. As I mentioned earlier, at over $4,000,000,000 $4,100,000,000 of revenue, we were up 18%.
Our largest business last year was USIS, which is our U. S. Credit business at $1,500,000,000 up 16%. Workforce Solutions, which is our fastest growing business and most valuable business, had revenue last year of $1,400,000,000 up 51%. Our international business, where we operate in 25 countries outside the United States had revenue of $862,000,000 and was down 4% as a result of the challenging COVID environment.
And our global consumer business at $345,000,000 was also down 4% and also impacted by the COVID environment. But overall, a very strong performance by Equifax with our margins increasing by 2 40 basis points and our earnings per share up 22%. We've got a strong start to 2021 with 5 acquisitions completed in the Q1, CreditWorks, AccountScore, Count, Hiretech and i2 Verify. We've already invested $867,000,000 in the future of Equifax by reinvesting our strong outperformance in our core businesses to provide platforms for future growth. And we're very excited about the accretive and strategic nature of all of these acquisitions.
Account extremely strategic for Equifax in the fast growing identity and fraud marketplace, which is an $18,000,000,000 marketplace, growing at about 20%. So that acquisition is very strategic to Equifax as we broaden into the identity and fraud space. We took a strong response over the last year to COVID. Our priorities were very clear. 1st and foremost, protecting the health and safety of our teammates and their families, while continuing continuous operations for our customers and consumers.
We also focused on continuing our investments in our cloud, data and technology transformation as well as continuing new product investments. Our crisis management team operated quite effectively with daily updates to me and reviews with our Board of Directors. A year ago, we moved a little over a year ago, we moved to work from home program and we've come back to work on a 50% basis, which we expect to expand as vaccine rollouts continue. So we get back to a return to office mode in the latter parts of 2021. There's some favorable market macros that really are advantaging Equifax as a leading data analytics and technology company.
First is the explosion of data that our customers are demanding and using and that are really enhancing decisioning. We all know and you do too that more data results in better decisions, but more data is also difficult to manage. And that's the role Equifax plays and that's where our cloud transformation is going to be quite valuable. Increased governance and control of data by consumers is also a macro that also plays to Equifax with our proprietary and high security and privacy controls around our data. Data in real time as well as the use of AI and machine learning also plays to Equifax with our leading AI capabilities, with our neuro decisioning technology, which is one of the only patented technologies in our space.
And then identity has really been accelerated. Identity through digital interactions that consumers have in almost everything they do is really driving the need to identify who the individual is when they're coming online to access their bank account records, to make a money transfer, to open up a credit card, to do e commerce shopping. Identity is critically important and the Kount acquisition along with the Equifax data assets really play into that. So we're excited about the macros that are driving our business going forward. At the heart of Equifax is our differentiated data.
We have data assets that no one else has in our space, really differentiated capabilities that are incredibly powerful and we're always focused on both expanding our data assets, either through organic actions or through acquisitions like some of the acquisitions I talked about earlier that we've completed already in 2021. The Cloud Sync transformation that Equifax launched 3 years ago with a $1,500,000,000 incremental commitment to take our technology to cloud native and our data to the cloud is progressing rapidly. And as we enter 2021, we're at a stage now where we're able to start taking real advantage of the differentiated capabilities that come with the cloud, including the always on stability, a speed of bringing new products to our customers, rapid delivery of data really in real time, built in security, which is critical with the data proprietary data and sensitive data that we manage on both the consumer and commercial side. Personalized experiences and of course leading data ingestion. We believe the investment in our technology is really going to accelerate our growth going forward and enhance our margins.
And we're excited about moving into actually being able to utilize our cloud capabilities in 2021, 2022 and beyond. So only Equifax has many, many capabilities, whether it starts with our differentiated data. Our focus now is leveraging our cloud native capabilities, both in the technology and data side. We have advanced data analytics that no one else has as well as global platform. So we believe there's a bright future for Equifax going forward.
New products are a real lever for our growth and a real focus for our team. You see on the slide that we've been accelerating our new product rollouts. Historically, we've done somewhere in the 70 to 80 range of new products per year. Last year, we rolled out 134 new products. And already in the Q1, we've rolled out 39 new products versus 35 last year.
And this is all really leveraging our new cloud capabilities and new products we believe will really fuel our growth in the future and are a big priority of our team. We launched earlier this year our new strategy for the next 3 years called EFX 2023, focused on leveraging the cloud for growth. And we've got the pillars that you see on the right hand side of the slide are our strategic priorities. They're quite similar to our EFX 2020 priorities, but really a sharpened focus around accelerating innovation in new products, leveraging the Equifax cloud capabilities, which are really unique versus our competitors, will be and are the only cloud native data analytics company. Expanding our differentiated data assets are at the heart of Equifax.
We've got a real focus about putting our customers first and delivering solutions to our customers to help them grow and help them expand their business. We're executing on bolt on M and A like the 5 acquisitions we already talked about that we've done so far in 2021. Security is at the heart of Equifax and we've got a goal that I set out for the company 3 years ago that's continuing to be an industry leader in data security. And yesterday, we issued our inaugural annual security annual report that details all our progress on security, which we're quite proud of. And we know there's more to do and we'll continue to focus on it.
And then last, our team is what really differentiates Equifax. We think we have one of the strongest teams in the industry and we operate as one team and one Equifax. We're also purpose driven. We rolled out a purpose about 2 years ago. Our purpose is to help people live their financial best.
We impact consumers' lives and small business owners' lives every day, whether it's 30,000,000 consumers that obtained loans, dollars 30,000,000 to buy a car or in Canada, 800,000 consumers securing a car loan. In India, 1 point 9,000,000 consumers obtaining a motorcycle loan. We impact all lives, whether it's someone renting an apartment, buying a new car, getting a mortgage, getting a job. There's just so many impacts that we have of helping people live their financial best. We also focus in our communities where we work and live, whether it's here in Atlanta or in St.
Louis or in our markets around the globe. Last year, we invested $2,800,000 in our communities through the Equifax Foundation and our many partnerships that we had have. We have over 1,000 hours volunteer last year even in the COVID environment. We have a matching gift program with over 400 of our employees, donated $840,000 in matches to charities that are important to them, and then $500,000 of direct revenue received as a result of our Equifax powered home screen product. So we're focused on giving back to our communities and really helping those in need in this challenging environment.
And lastly, ESG is a real priority for Equifax, really positioning for long sustainable growth. We're focused on growing our company and our revenue, but also we're focused on supporting consumers. We're focused around inclusion and diversity with our team. The environment is very important to Equifax and we're investing around improving our environmental footprint. And then of course security is at the heart of what Equifax does of protecting the sensitive data that we have.
And if you haven't, please take a look at our ESG homepage on equifax.com where we detail our ESG priorities.
Thanks, Mark. We would now like to open the meeting to shareholders to ask questions during a brief question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please click the Q and A button on the lower right hand side of the website. Type your question into the submit a question field and press submit. We will do our best to answer as many questions as we can today, subject to our meeting time constraints.
Thanks.
So, thank you. It appears that we have no questions for today's meeting. I now declare the meeting concluded and thank you all for attending and most importantly, thank you for your continued support to Equifax.
The Annual Meeting of Shareholders for Equifax Incorporated has now come to an end. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.