Experian 2013 Annual Report Download - page 35
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Financial and strategic highlights
by region
Our business in North America is
performing strongly. This reflects the
progress we are making across our
credit-related activities and in particular
a growing contribution from our recent
investment initiatives. We have seen
strong progress in fraud and identity
management, having secured several
new contracts in the public sector,
as well as good growth in healthcare
payments, as we expand the suite of
services we offer to hospitals and other
healthcare practitioners. We have also
seen further growth across business
information and automotive. Our
financial services vertical performed
well, as we introduce new sources of
data and as lending conditions slowly
improve. In our marketing business,
we made the small but strategically
significant acquisition of Conversen
during the year. Conversen has
added new cross-channel marketing
capabilities and has been positively
received by clients since we integrated
it into our digital marketing portfolio.
In Consumer Services, we have made
considerable progress in the affinity
channel, securing a new channel partner
during the year and we are laying the
foundations for future expansion of our
affinity business. As we have referenced
previously, performance in our direct-
to-consumer channel was held back as
we temporarily suspended acquiring
customers through the affiliate channel.
We were pleased to have delivered
organic revenue growth in the mid-
teens in Latin America during the year.
Our business in Brazil has continued
to perform well, notwithstanding the
significant slowdown that has taken
place in the Brazilian economy. We
are adding clients in new customer
segments, expanding the size of key
client relationships and making progress
across several new verticals. This helped
to offset the effects of reduced credit
issuance by some financial services
clients during the year. There was a
strong contribution too from Computec,
which delivered organic revenue growth
in excess of 20%. We are placing a lot of
emphasis on expanding our presence
in these markets by introducing a range
of Experian products, particularly in
software and fraud prevention, as well
as in digital marketing.
An important strategic milestone was
the approval in December 2012 of the
final bank regulations for the sharing
and collection of positive consumer
credit reference data in Brazil. Banks
have until August 2013 to comply
with the new regulations. We are in
discussions with key data suppliers,
with the aim of securing a critical mass
of positive data over the next eighteen
months or so. We were also pleased to
complete the acquisition during the year
of a further 29.6% interest in Serasa to
take our total holding to 99.6%.
Our UK and Ireland business is
growing, notwithstanding the weak
economic backdrop in the region, and
our performance in fact strengthened
somewhat as the year progressed. Our
Consumer Services business has grown
very strongly, by more than 20%, as we
introduce new features to attract more
members and to retain them for longer.
We are also benefiting from a return to
growth across Credit Services, as we
introduce new sources of data, new
products and as we expand further
into new customer segments such as
utilities, public sector, insurance and
telecommunications. We have seen a
slight improvement in activity levels
across the financial services segment,
as well as strengthening pipelines
across Decision Analytics. These
factors helped to offset a decline in our
marketing business.
Weak conditions in Europe and across
some parts of Asia Pacific created
some headwinds and resulted in low
growth across EMEA/Asia Pacific. We
have taken action to improve operating
efficiency, while at the same time
expanding and growing our presence
in markets where we see good growth
potential, for example in Turkey
and Russia. An important strategic
milestone was the launch during the
year of a new credit bureau in Australia.
P36
P38 P40
P42
Business overview Business review Governance Financial statements
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