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Experian PLC
LSE:EXPN

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LSE:EXPN
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Price: 3 453 GBX 1.62% Market Closed
Updated: May 13, 2024

Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2022-Q1

from 0
Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Experian Q1 Trading Update Call. My name is Annie, and I'm your operator today. [Operator Instructions] And now I'd like to hand over to Brian Cassin. Please go ahead, sir.

B
Brian J. Cassin
CEO & Executive Director

Thank you very much, operator, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to our Q1 Trading Update Call. I'm joined today by Lloyd Pitchford, and Lloyd will take you through the trading performance after my opening remarks. So as you've all seen, Q1 was a very good quarter, better than we anticipated, with total revenue growth up 31% at actual rates and organic revenue growth was 22%. Of course, the comparative was, at week 1, as we lapped the height of the pandemic-related slowdown last year, but even on a 2-year basis, this is a very good result. I'm very pleased to report that all regions and segments were in positive territory. And special mention, again, does go to Consumer Services, which delivered organic revenue growth of 32%. We made use of over the past year to strengthen our market position, and we emerged from the pandemic as a much bigger force than before. We now have 116 million free members globally, and we still see plenty of growth opportunity ahead. Now I'm immensely proud of the efforts by our teams from around the world to drive financial inclusion. At Experian, we believe that every individual deserves the opportunity to reach their fullest financial potential through fair and affordable access to credit. And we see that one of the key roles that we can and do play is to level the playing field for people in marginalized or low-income communities to provide more equitable and affordable access to credit. Experian Boost and Score Turbo help people build credit profiles that paint a fuller picture of people's financial lives. And there's a lot more that we can do by promoting financial literacy through expanded data sources, innovation and collaboration. Programs like our United for Financial Health program are good examples of this, but there is perhaps no better example anywhere of how we use data to improve outcomes for people than products like Boost and no better demonstration of how people's data can be used to benefit them and not just others. Moving to the regions now. Let's move to North America, starting with the Q1 highlights. Unique amongst our regions, North America delivered growth in Q1 last year. And while the comparison is a weaker one, it's not especially so. And I think that puts into context just how strong the Q1 performance in North America was. Lenders are issuing credit cards again as credit quality improves. We see increased activity across financial services clients, fintechs, buy now pay later and other segments with a strong bounce back in prospecting and acquisition volumes even as mortgages tailed off. Clients are focused on digitizing their services, driving demand for products like Ascend, our cloud-enabled decisioning propositions and fraud and identity management. We've also made very good progress across verification services this quarter with all acquisitions trading on or ahead of our buy plan and an encouraging client reception and some new wins for our [ Verified ] proposition. Health had a strong quarter 2. While there has been a mix of drivers through the course of pandemic, fundamentally increased demand for new products in health care systems is creating new opportunities. So we have benefited to an extent from growth in authentication volumes linked to the vaccine rollout, but our performance was strong across the breadth of our product suite. We also had a very strong quarter for new business bookings with implementations for new digital onboarding services like registration accelerator, which shifts the patient experience away from paper-based processes to a more digital experience. Consumer Services delivered another outstanding result. Over the past year, we have significantly enhanced our position in lead generation. Our membership base has now reached 44 million free members, and we have expanded integrations with lend departments. We are benefiting from a bounce back in lending as we have expanded the membership base and, therefore, have more traffic. We are an increasingly attractive and important marketplace for lenders. The U.S. is also still in its infancy of digitizing marketplaces like auto insurance, and we made a lot of progress over the past year to further penetrate this new vertical. Our premium offers also continue to do well. Last year, we saw a big influx of subscription members. And so far, these proved to be resilient. We're enriching membership offers and investing in more personalized interactions, which will help drive growth and retention. Now moving to Latin America. We had a very good quarter in Latin America, which in Q1 was our fastest-growing region. The pandemic is still fairly rampant across the region with case rates at very high levels. That said, Brazil is making progress on vaccination rates, and this is helping the economy recover. Agriculture is performing well on the back of increasing commodity prices. Our new business creation has increased and default rates have seen some improvement as restrictions have eased. These indicators bode well for the future. And in the meantime, we have seen steady volume recovery in B2B. At the same time, positive data adoption is growing. The FinTech sector continues to gather pace, giving us new areas to address. New product contribution was a significant factor in B2B revenue performance this quarter with a notable contribution from positive data as we've introduced new attributes and with propositions like Serasa Score gaining wider acceptance. More people are coming into the financial net in Brazil, and it's driving growth in Consumer Services, which had another tremendous quarter, more than doubling our revenues. Limpa Nome saw more success, adding new partners and making further progress digitizing the off-line collections market FinTech providers want to acquire large audiences cost-effectively, and they can do that on our digital platform through our eCred marketplace. We now have 62 million free members, and we're making rapid progress to grow and diversify our revenue base. We also continue to take steps to extend and expand our franchise across the Latin America region. And towards the end of the quarter, we completed the acquisition of a new credit bureau in Chile. We also had a very strong start of year in the U.K. and Ireland. We've made a lot of progress improving the business, and we're very well placed as the economy recovers. The big swings have been in core bureau volumes, where generally speaking, volumes are now tracking above pre-pandemic levels. In Consumer Services, we had record performances in lead generation as credit supply increases. It's also important to emphasize that the core business KPIs are also trending positively. Revenue from new products is expected to grow this year. Our new business pipeline is healthy with our win rate very encouraging, led by our ongoing investments in data quality and coverage and by our ability to deliver value-added services to our customers, and our B2B innovation pipeline is very strong. Consumer Services clearly had a very positive Q1, and it has got a lot of momentum. Membership growth has been very healthy now at approximately 10 million free members. Turning now to EMEA/Asia Pacific where we saw good recovery, but there's -- where there's still somewhat of a mixed picture country by country. We've seen recovery in bureau volumes across most markets, although against particularly weak comps in some areas. While more developed countries in Europe have progressed well with their vaccine rollouts, some of our markets are still very much in the grip of pandemic or like Australia and Malaysia have entered new lockdowns. That said, some positive structural trends are clearly emerging and pandemic has capitalized investment by banks and digital platforms. We can see this in the recent bank consolidations across Europe. It's likely to accelerate the pace of bank branch closures in favor of digital banks, and we also see it in markets like India, which struggled to deliver financial services during the pandemic due to reliance on off-line infrastructure. We feel very well positioned to serve this need, particularly in European markets for our open banking and cloud-enabled capabilities as I mentioned before, like Ascend, Experian One, CrossCore. These are becoming much more tangible client conversations and in the deals that we're signing and in new business pipeline creation. So with that overview, I'm now going to hand it over to Lloyd for the financials.

L
Lloyd M. Pitchford
CFO & Executive Director

Thanks, Brian. Good morning, everyone. As you've seen, we had a strong start to the year and ahead of our expectations with organic revenue growth of 22%. Our core lending markets were strong, including a bounce back in unsecured credit volumes and consumer credit activity as we saw market restrictions ease. The outperformance versus our guidance in the first quarter came primarily from our Consumer Services and consumer bureau businesses in our 3 core markets as credit activity recovered strongly. Organic revenue for Consumer Services was up 32%, whilst B2B was up 18%. Including acquisitions, our total revenue growth at constant exchange rates was 28% higher as we saw the benefit from the acquisitions we made across the last year. Exchange rates were a 3% revenue tailwind in the quarter, driven by the appreciation in sterling. Including this, total revenue at actual exchange rates grew by 31%. Looking first at the performance in North America, where organic revenue was up 22%, with B2B up 19%, and Consumer Services up 28%. Data within B2B was up 20% with strength in all business units. A continued improvement in bureau volumes delivered strong growth across consumer and business information. Volumes were up strongly, both on FY '21 and FY '20 levels, as we saw a catch-up in activity as market restrictions were eased. Excluding mortgage, the growth in our consumer business bureau was 26%. Mortgage revenue was flat against last year as higher interest rates reduced refinancing demand, and we still expect mortgage to be a group headwind of around 1% for the full year. Decisioning was up 17%, as both Health and Decision Analytics grew double digits. Within the health business, volumes were a key growth driver as hospitals undertook higher levels of elective surgery versus the height of the pandemic in the prior year. Authentication volumes were strong, linked to some extent to the vaccination program, as with coverage discovery and revenue assurance. Decision Analytics benefited from strength in fraud and ID volumes. Consumer Services was up 28% as our subscription business continued to grow well with the paid member base continuing to deliver growth even as we lap the elevated level of acquisitions last year. Lead generation revenue almost doubled during the quarter as credit supply continued to return to the market and as our auto insurance vertical continued to perform well, following its launch last year. We continue to be very active in investing in new innovations and marketing to take advantage of the significant momentum we've built across the Consumer Services business. Moving on to Latin America, where organic revenue was up 25%. At constant exchange rates, total revenue was up 31%, including revenue from the Brazil acquisitions. Factoring in an FX tailwind during the quarter, total revenue grew 33%. B2B was up 18% organically, whilst Consumer Services more than doubled for the fifth consecutive quarter, up 107%. Data grew 16% organically as increased economic activity led to higher volumes in the bureau. This growth was supplemented by strength in positive data, new propositions like Experian Ascend and the expansion of Serasa [ Auto ].Consumer Services continues to make great progress, and we had another very strong quarter on the back of strong membership performance. Revenue was driven by volume increases in Limpa Nome, increases in marketplace offers as we scale eCred and contribution from our premium subscription products. Turning to the U.K. We saw 20% organic revenue growth, up 35% at actual rates. B2B and Consumer Services grew 15% and 37%, respectively. Within B2B, data grew 20% during the quarter, helped by bureau volume recovery to pre-pandemic levels. We saw strength across both acquisition and prequalification as credit supply returned to the market and lenders were very active in new customer acquisition. Decisioning was up 8% organically with the momentum in volumes we saw at the end of FY '21 continuing into the first quarter, as demand for both identity and fraud analytics products continued. Consumer Services grew 37% with growth across both subscription and lead generation, which has benefited from the return of credit supply in the market as lending criteria have eased. Moving on to EMEA and Asia Pacific, where organic revenue grew double digits at 19%, with data and decisioning up 23% and 14%, respectively. On the data side of the region, we're seeing a recovery in bureau volumes nearing pre-pandemic levels in our key markets. Decisioning performed well during the quarter with a good pipeline, particularly in our EMEA markets. Turning now to our expectations for the rest of the year. Given the strong start to the year, we've raised our full year organic revenue guidance to 9% to 11%. And we, therefore, expect growth in the 6% to 8% range organically for the rest of the year, taking account of the expected drag from mortgage, with Q2 starting at a higher end of this range. Adding in our organic revenue brings us total revenue growth guidance to 13% to 15% for the full year. Our margin guidance's unchanged, delivering strong margin accretion, which we've guided as at least 60 basis points of margin progression at constant currency. And all other areas of our modeling considerations remain unchanged for now, and we'll provide a further update at the half year. And with that, let me hand you back to Brian.

B
Brian J. Cassin
CEO & Executive Director

Thanks, Lloyd. And so to summarize, we've had a very good start to FY '22 with a stronger-than-expected Q1. The comparatives do get tougher from here, but we do expect this to be a very good year overall for Experian. We see a lot of opportunity ahead, a very significant one in Consumer Services and with terrific lead in positive data in Brazil and exciting prospects in verticals like health, verification services. And we're making great progress and done a lot of heavy lifting in the U.K. in the last year. I think we're well placed to take advantage of recovery there. And so while there remain uncertainties and some pandemic-related issues as we look through the rest of the year, we do feel good about our prospects as a whole. And with that, we're going to open up the line for your questions. So back to you, operator.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The first one is from Oscar Val Mas.

O
Oscar Val Mas
Analyst

5It's Oscar from JPMorgan. I had two questions. The first one on Consumer Services. You've touched on this in the prepared remarks, but could you comment specifically on the competitive landscape in the U.S. B2C market and how your market share is going against your competitors now that there's more marketing spend in the system? And then the second question is touching again on EBIT margins. You've kept your guidance unchanged at, at least 60 basis points. Can you perhaps remind us if anything has changed given you've upgraded the revenue guidance? So yes, those are my 2 questions.

B
Brian J. Cassin
CEO & Executive Director

Great. Thank you. Maybe I'll deal with the first one and Lloyd will touch on the EBIT margins. No, we don't see any change in the competitive landscape. As I said in the prepared remarks, we've spent the last year actually really solidifying our position across a broad spectrum actually of Consumer Services propositions. We refer to lead gen, I think, because actually, that market is coming back very quickly. We expected it would. It obviously had quite a big contraction last year as we went into the pandemic. So we fully expected that we would see strong growth on that. I think the reference that I made the fact that our membership base has grown very significantly now to 44 million members, I mean that's a very, very significant platform. And I know we spent last year in improving and increasing number of lender integrations that we have. So I think we're well set here to continue to make great progress in Consumer Services across the board.

L
Lloyd M. Pitchford
CFO & Executive Director

Yes, on the EBIT margins, as I mentioned in the remarks, we've got really good momentum in our consumer businesses across the 3 markets. And this is the time to really take advantage of that momentum and continue to invest in customer acquisition and product innovation. So with the majority of the beat to guidance coming from the Consumer Services business, we're taking the opportunity to continue to invest behind that momentum. So that means that the extra revenue is coming at about group average margins. So that means the guidance is retained for the full year. We'll provide a further update at the half year.

Operator

Our second question is coming from Paul Sullivan.

P
Paul Daniel Alexander Sullivan
Director & Analyst

Yes. I know it's quite difficult to split out. But how should we think about the structural and cyclical contributions to growth in the first quarter and what it means for the guidance of 6% to 8% through the rest of the year? And with the backdrop of fairly subdued lending still in the U.S. and the lag in Europe, it feels like there is still a cyclical recovery ahead of you. And on that basis, how do we think about the full year guidance still being fairly conservative? And then secondly, any color on sort of consumer engagement? I know the membership base is still ticking up quite nicely. But any sort of color on engagement and then the next steps of broadening out the lead gen platform? And then finally from me, do you think that sort of the regulators recognize the importance of consumer-contributed data in Boost and how it's changed? Or do you think it changes the narrative in your -- in the conversations you're having with them?

B
Brian J. Cassin
CEO & Executive Director

Okay. So I'll deal with the consumer engagement regulation points and Lloyd will come back on the cyclical versus the structural growth. I'll deal with the last question first. I absolutely think that this is changing the narrative in the discussions that we're having with regulators all over the world. Obviously, we are demonstrating to them exactly -- as I said in my remarks, exactly what the whole point of consumer contributed data is, which is to actually help people get better outcomes. That's what Boost and Score Turbo in Brazil does. Actually, one of the best demonstrations of this is, I think, some stuff which is coming out of Brazilian Central Bank right now, and they're doing some early sort of analysis of what's happening there on the back of positive data. And what we're seeing is a significant contraction in credit spreads, which, of course -- and a significant increase in the number of people that are included in the mainstream financial net. So really, that is the best demonstration you can have of where you significantly increase the amount of data that can be viewed on a consumer, and it gives direct and very material benefit to them. It's obviously -- the quantum of that increase is very significant in the market like Brazil. It's moving from negative to positive data. Where you have very well-developed markets like U.S. and U.K., you really kind of -- the benefits that you give really fall on the lower scored part of the population or indeed the part of the population that can't be scored at all. So most governments are focused on financial inclusion. Most governments are focused on fairness and getting people better outcome. And actually, this is exactly what these products are designed to do, and we are getting traction with that. Second point on consumer engagement. Yes, there's a lot of investment going into the platforms to really enhance and to increase the frequency with which people use the platform. We are seeing good progress on that. That will be a focus for us going forward. I think we feel good about all the propositions that we can put on the platform. But really, it's sort of a multipronged strategy. I think that's one thing that we would do. We obviously have highlighted that we have, I think, a long runway of growth in lead gen to go. And other verticals like the insurance one is still growing very fast in North America. So I think there's a lot going on in Consumer Service. We feel very good about the broad panoply of things that we're doing there. And then, Lloyd, do you want to talk about the comparators?

L
Lloyd M. Pitchford
CFO & Executive Director

Yes. So yes, really interesting question for like splitting out structural versus cyclical. There's obviously a lot going on in Q1. I think -- and we clearly have weak comps given the noise that was there this time last year. There's definitely an element of bounce back in terms of people being released from restrictions and active again, the benefit from our innovation investment. And obviously, mortgage is in a shifting position from a tailwind this last year to a headwind. I think probably the best way to think about it is, for the rest of the year, we're pretty confidently back in that high single-digit territory, taking account of the drag from mortgage. The North America consumer bureau excluding mortgage is going to be high single digits, we think, for the rest of the year. Consumer Services globally will be strongly double digit. The areas of uncertainty in the guidance, probably a couple of things to call out. The -- how long does this bounce back in activity continue. Clearly, consumer balance sheets are strong coming out of the pandemic, but there's still quite a bit of uncertainty. So that determines the range. And also the -- on the subscription side of consumer, we've been pleased that we haven't seen elevated churn levels on the members we added last year, and we've continued to add subscription members sequentially. But clearly, there's a range of possible outcomes as we go through this year. Just on your other point on consumer engagement. I just want to highlight, really. This -- we continue to add a lot of members. So this last quarter, we added 6 million across the 3 geographies. And that means in the last 12 months during quite a turbulent world period, we've added 30 million members across our 3 geographies. And that gives you a sense, I think, of the momentum we have behind the consumer business. And our product development road map will bring numerous additional reasons for people to engage with us as new products get launched. So we're feeling very positive about that.

Operator

Our third question is coming from Rajesh Kumar.

R
Rajesh Kumar
Analyst

Just following up on the point you made about regulation. Clearly, there's an increased stress on data quality, data accuracy. Can you help us understand how your strategy of directly engaging with consumers versus your peers to a large extent using Intuit, Credit Karma as the mode of engagement affects that data improvement cycle? And also, how much data improvement you've seen since the last major study almost 10 years back was taken by the regulators for Experian? That would really help. The second one is on the new markets you've gone to: South Africa -- South Africa is not a new market, but you you've done an acquisition there. Then Germany and Chile. Can you give us a sense of how those -- what are the levels of growth and the piece of opportunity set you're seeing after the pandemic in terms of the next 2 to 3 years? And then finally, just on the drop-through margins, you clearly have a much faster growth. So given the operational gearing, your margin guidance unchanged, does that mean that you have basically started investing at a faster pace for financial year '23 growth investments?

B
Brian J. Cassin
CEO & Executive Director

Great. Thanks, Rajesh, and good morning to you. So 3 quite wide-ranging questions there. So let's -- Lloyd, you'll take the margin question, I'll do the regulation, the accuracy one. Just on the data quality. Data quality is something that we've been very focused on for a long time, and we have very, very high levels of accuracy across all our bureaus. I'm actually pretty confident in saying that our accuracy levels are higher than any bureau pretty much in every market that we operate in. And obviously, this is an area of great scrutiny that the regulators will be very focused on because clearly the stakes that are made on consumers' credit reports could potentially lead to outcomes or wrong outcomes, and we all want to prevent that. If you look at the levels of accuracy across the bureaus, it's extremely high, and people get a bit focused on the complaints portal with the CFPB. But what you have to remember is a lot of those complaints come from credit repair companies. And so to a certain extent, they're sort of flooding. Of course, no mistakes ultimately are acceptable, and we strive actually for 100% accuracy. Most of the mistakes in credit reports actually come from data furnishers, where inaccurate information comes into the system and we work extremely hard to try and correct that. In fact, we have a number of tools and products, and we are market-leading in this, where we essentially check all the data that comes into us and provide that as a service back to the furnishers. And I think that's something that we're actually very highly regarded for in the marketplace. Today, our accuracy levels in the U.S. stand at 99.9%. When you think about the volume of data that we have, that we process, that's an extraordinary level of accuracy. Of course, the 0.1% is still actually a large number of people across a very large population. We're never entirely sure whether we could get to 100%. But actually, that number has moved from what was a high level of around about 97%, 98% sort of 5 or 6 years ago to that level of accuracy, which I think just illustrates that you don't do these things overnight, and it illustrates to you that we've been doing this for quite a long time. If you take something like Brazil, where data accuracy is a bigger problem than somewhere like the U.S., which is a much more well-honed system, then you can see a really big trend where on our Consumer Services business, we've actually been able to use the data that's contributed by consumers to improve our accuracy quite significantly in that marketplace. So consumer contributed data has a role to play, I think, in markets where there is poor data quality. I think in markets where there's very high data quality, consumer contributed data is less about accuracy and more about different types of information that can be used to give a different profile of the consumer, and that particularly applies in things like Boost where [indiscernible] for our customers or customers where we have no information. We can use different types of information to score them. So there's slightly different things. But hopefully, you get a sense from what I've outlined that this is -- it's not a new focus for us. It's obviously a very hot focus for regulators, but I think we've got a really good story to tell, which, frankly, is not really represented very well by some of the groups that talk about this stuff. I don't think there'll be many companies out there that could claim 99.9% accuracy in an extremely large data file. But we're not going to rest until we can get that to 100%, and that will be our focus. Moving on to the acquisitions, I think your question -- if you look at some of the acquisitions that we've done, it's a very clear laid-out plan. We have obviously been long wanting to tender the German market bureau acquisitions. We've had an extremely successful track record of wherever we can sensibly add bureau acquisitions. We believe that we're going to be able to add the capabilities of those and drive really good opportunities for us over the next -- over the medium term. Germany is going extremely well. We're really happy with that. Obviously, that's a very large economy and a big opportunity for us. Chile, the one we just announced, we actually have quite a large Decision Analytics presence in Chile with most of the large banks actually already using Experian decisioning systems. This, I think, is a very sensible add-on to our Spanish Latin American business and just enhances our footprint. We also actually have quite a large employee footprint in Chile because some of our global development centers are based there. They service a number of our other territories around the world. So yes, I think we're excited about the progress we're making with the acquisitions we've done. And I think we've got a very consistent approach to this, and we'll look to do more of that type if we can find them. Lloyd?

L
Lloyd M. Pitchford
CFO & Executive Director

Yes. And just to add on the acquisitions. As you look back in South Africa, in Spain, in Peru, where we've made bureau acquisitions alongside an existing bureau, those are some of the most economic acquisitions we made, where we're able to combine 2 bureaus in market and really provide a compelling market leadership proposition in that market. So we're feeling pretty good about those. On to drop through. The consumer business is one that we can attenuate the investment pretty closely. And we know when we're adding value in the market. If you just look back at the last 5 quarters of growth in North America consumer, we've gone 10%, 16%, 18%, 20%, 28%. That's a business, a large business with momentum. And that's the time to continue to invest to extend that momentum. So we're continuing to invest and expand both our marketing and product launch investments. We had a very significant launch in the auto vertical this time last year. That's progressing well. We'll have about $40 million of revenue in that vertical this year from 0 a year ago. And I think that gives you a sense of why we're continuing to expand our investment. So what does that mean? It means the incremental revenue that we're seeing predominantly from Consumer Services is coming in at about group average margins after that investment. So that's why we're keeping the margin guidance flat.

Operator

Our next question is coming from Anvesh Agrawal.

A
Anvesh Agrawal
Equity Analyst

I just got a couple of questions on the margin side. First, Lloyd, you said that the Brazilian consumer business probably was running at a breakeven rate last year or maybe slightly loss-making. How do you see that developing this year given the run rate and the investment, both on the growth and the growth side? And then just on the U.K. margins, the long-term ambition has been around like 30%. The transformation looks like it's going pretty well, and the U.K. is bouncing back. So where do you see sort of U.K. moving in the 30% journey in FY '22 on the margin side?

L
Lloyd M. Pitchford
CFO & Executive Director

Yes, sure. So the U.K., last year, we were at about 17% margin. And we said that with the restructuring activity and the real progress we're making on the restructuring and then the transformation in the U.K., we expected this year for that to come back to something of the order of 22% to 23%. So quite a big jump back, starting that journey back towards the long-term goal of 30%. So good, good progress there. On Brazil consumer, we said we were, at the end of last year, getting to breakeven. And from here, we'd expect margin to continue to progress. So we expect to be profitable this year. Clearly, we have a very big opportunity in that consumer business in Brazil. So we're principally focused on our long-term value creation. So whilst we expect it to be profitable this year, we're going to be very focused on continuing the growth drive.

A
Anvesh Agrawal
Equity Analyst

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

L
Lloyd M. Pitchford
CFO & Executive Director

No. I think you have to look at the different moving parts in the portfolio. So clearly, we had a very strong mortgage growth last year. This year, it will decline by about 1%. That's higher than average margin, the continued investment we're putting into marketing in the U.S. consumer business and the mix, therefore, margin in North America. So when you take all of that in the round, about 60 basis points is where we're guiding. And I guess I've made this comment previously. To some extent, near-term margin is a choice for us. It's a choice of the investments that we're making to create value. And I think you've seen with the momentum we've built from our investments over the last 3 or 4 years of growth the benefit that's coming to value creation from those investments. So that's really the thinking behind the margin guidance, Anvesh.

Operator

The next question is coming from Karl Green.

K
Karl Green
Analyst

I've just got two questions, please. The first one on Experian Boost in the U.S. Are you able to quantify how many unscorable consumers and those with thin files you've helped to become scorable since Boost's inception, please? That's the first question. And then secondly, just in terms of the defined accuracy data that you provided, which is obviously very high, can you just remind us as to what the definition of an accurate file stands at? I think, in terms of some of the narrative that's out there, there seems to be some confusion about how different companies are actually measuring that and what are the different tiering standards around that, please?

B
Brian J. Cassin
CEO & Executive Director

Yes. Well, we would measure accuracy across every spectrum, which includes things like the accuracy of the name and address of the consumer, the data we have on file as well as the actual trade lines that are submitted. A lot of the inaccuracies that are reported as sort of detrimental inaccuracies often actually are some simple inaccuracies on base data and not actually on trade lines. So within that 0.1%, how much of that would actually be kind of detrimental in that regard, trade line's wrong or dispute's wrong, a smaller proportion, I don't actually have the split of that. Quite a few of them would simply be corrections to sort of personal details. In terms of Boost results, we have a very significant benefit to unscorable people in that group because, clearly, those are the people that are actually mostly impacted by that. So the percentage of people with new credit match offers after Boost would be about 76% of people. You -- roughly about 33% of people who were not previously scorable become scorable with Boost. And to give you some other stats, we've provided over $6 billion of credit to consumers that have completed a Boost journey. And another data point of interest, the amount that you would -- the average amount saves on a 30-year mortgage by moving up the score tier, which a lot of people did, would be in excess of $20,000 over the lifetime of the loan. So we've got some really, really powerful statistics here to show exactly what benefit this is having for a lot of people. And that's why we feel very, very strong about this proposition and to the earlier question, why it also is being recognized by regulators as a very strong initiative.

K
Karl Green
Analyst

That's really helpful. I just -- maybe if you're able to sort of quantify in terms of thousands or tens of thousands of people that you've helped rather than just percentages?

B
Brian J. Cassin
CEO & Executive Director

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

Operator

The next question is coming from George Gregory.

G
George Nicholas Gregory
Research Analyst

I've got a couple please. Firstly, I think you have already partially answered this, but I wondered if you could just clarify the run rate, the revenue run rates for your 3 marketplace businesses, please? And secondly, just on technology, thinking about the midterm margin trajectory. Clearly, there are a lot of parts of the portfolio that should be moving in your favor like the U.K. and LatAm and so forth. Is there a scenario in your technology planning where you would -- you might move more of your data to the cloud that could change the transition of margin to the extent that you have higher dual running costs? Or is that -- is the margin trajectory expansion against what you could see as any reasonable technology scenario, please?

B
Brian J. Cassin
CEO & Executive Director

Okay. I'll take the second one. We outlined, George, I guess, at the full year that we had a margin drag, dual running costs in the P&L of about 100 basis points. And we think that will be stable this year and into the start of the following year and then will start to abate. And then obviously, beyond that, you have the benefits of the transition, not just the elimination of the dual running costs. And the assumptions we have are that we made quite a material shift out of our existing data centers into cloud infrastructure and cloud storage. Now exactly what percentage that will be will be variable, because clients have different positions on the use of cloud versus hosted data. But it's all encompassed in our -- the commentary that we've given. And that transition takes some time. I think any company that goes through a transition of this will tell you it takes a number of years, but we're well progressed. And yes, we've got all of the learnings from the complete shift, for example, of the consumer business on to cloud infrastructure and storage already in the business. On the run rate on the marketplace, very strong bounce back. So North America and Brazil, the lead gen business has more than doubled and in the U.K., more than tripled. We obviously -- that reflects a bit in the U.K. of a stronger negative position this time last year and a bounce back this year.

G
George Nicholas Gregory
Research Analyst

Those run rates are the reference to growth. Is that against the prior year?

B
Brian J. Cassin
CEO & Executive Director

Prior year, yes.

Operator

And the last question on the line, as I can see, is coming from Caroline Conway.

C
Caroline Conway

I actually wanted to ask about the decisioning side of the business. So the platform growth appears very strong across regions. Can you talk about what is potentially improving in the space, both on the customer side and within Experian strategy. And then I also wanted to ask within that about the growth strategy for FinTech and BNPL. You mentioned those as particularly strong points in the U.S. so I would just like to hear a little bit more about the product differentiation and what you expect to drive growth in these cases?

B
Brian J. Cassin
CEO & Executive Director

Sure. I'll let Lloyd comment on the actual comparators. But in terms of the strategy of our decision business, we're very clear about where we're driving that business. It's -- we've cloud-enabled the decisioning suite through an investment in Experian One and alongside our sort of hosted applications, PowerCurve itself, one of the most recognized decisioning software suites in financial services. So I think we're starting to see a lot of traction and demand for cloud-based decisioning. We're starting -- we're actually starting to see that first in the U.S., a lot of good traction there. But it's starting to spread really across most territories. I think Lloyd will comment on the comparators. But obviously, we had -- DA though is the business that is a bit more cyclical for us. So it had a much bigger impact last year than even some of the bureau businesses. So you're starting to see us lap some of that as well. But nonetheless, we are, as we referenced in the comments, starting to see really good client engagement with people starting to get back on to an investment cycle. In terms of the FinTech and buy now pay later, we've got a very strong presence in those sectors. We provide services to pretty much everybody playing in that arena. To some extent, the services are exactly the same as we provide to many of our other clients, which is that they need credit data and decisioning, they need fraud, and we provide all of those products to those players. And we focus on that specific vertical. They clearly have different needs and demands, and we serve them in the way that they want to be served. And we've had a lot of success in that, and I think that will continue. Lloyd, do you want to just comment on the comparators?

L
Lloyd M. Pitchford
CFO & Executive Director

Yes, sure. So if you break decisioning down, the first bit to break out probably is U.S. health care, which is within those numbers. And you can see from Page 2 of the release, that was growing strongly this time last year, but it's very strong growth this year, up 19%. And that's really as we bring the power of data to really try and transform the services that clients receive and that you manage a consumer's journey through the health care system. And we've seen very consistent growth in our health business now for 7, 8 years, and we expect that to continue. Within Decision Analytics, overall, this time last year, Q1 last year, that was down 14%. Q1 this year, it's up 19%. So you can see a pretty strong bounce back. And within that, very good growth in fraud and ID as we see the shift to more digital-originated transactions, good strong growth in analytics as people move to much more understanding real-time data. Software, as Brian said, is a little bit lumpy. We've got the transition to cloud, which changes a bit of the revenue recognition and also some areas, particularly in Asia Pacific, and a little bit of EMEA, where some of the decision-making is a bit longer on some of those software transitions. But overall, decisioning as a whole, good strong progress and particularly good strategic progress.

Operator

And the last question is coming from Andy Grobler.

A
Andrew Charles Grobler
Analyst

Just one from me, if I may. Just in terms of your [ Verified ] business, I know it's relatively early days, but could you talk a little about momentum kind of in the early stages of that business and what your expectations are for that kind of in the medium term, I guess, over the next 2 to 3 years against such a strong competitor?

B
Brian J. Cassin
CEO & Executive Director

Yes. Andy, thank you. Yes, it's still really early days. But as we outlined at the year-end what our strategy was, obviously, we made some acquisitions in employer services, we needed to build our presence and our unique data asset. We're doing that. We're having, I think, very good engagement with our client base about our proposition. So I think the signs are encouraging. But as we said, it's still early days. We'll be able to tell you a little bit more as we go through half year and year-end as to exactly what progress we're making. But at this stage, quite encouraging. I think as we've also said, this is a very large and very growing market. Obviously, there's one extremely large competitor in there. I think that there's plenty of room for people to grow here. And there's absolutely a demand for some additional service provisioning here. So we're benefiting from that, I think.

L
Lloyd M. Pitchford
CFO & Executive Director

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

A
Andrew Charles Grobler
Analyst

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

B
Brian J. Cassin
CEO & Executive Director

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

Operator

There are no further questions.

B
Brian J. Cassin
CEO & Executive Director

Okay. Great. Well, thanks, everybody, for joining. Thanks for all the questions. I wish you all a good day, and we look forward to speaking to you again in November for our half year results. Thanks very much.

Operator

Thank you very much, everyone. That concludes your conference call for today. You may now disconnect. Thank you for joining and thank you rest of your day.

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