Mark W. Begor
Chief Executive Officer at Equifax
Thanks, Dorian, and good morning. Before I get to our strong fourth quarter results, I'd like to spend a few minutes discussing the tremendous progress and outstanding results we delivered last year. As shown on slide four, our financial performance in 2021 was very strong and built off an equally strong 2020. Revenue was up 19% with organic local currency revenue growth of 15% and core non-mortgage growth of 22%, all well above our new 8% to 12% long-term financial framework, reflecting the strength of the new Equifax growth model. Adjusted EPS at $7.64 was up 10% and adjusted for the change in treatment of transformation expenses in '21 was up a strong 24%. This is truly an outstanding year, substantially stronger than we expected when we started 2021 and despite a U.S. mortgage market that was down more than we expected at 7.5%. We delivered eight consecutive quarters of double-digit growth and two years of strong above-market performance with 17% growth in 2020 and 19% growth last year.
Workforce Solutions delivered a milestone with revenue over $2 billion for the first time, up 39% with organic revenue growth of 34%. And the business is up two times from their 2019 revenue of $915 million. This was again driven by very strong performance in Verification Services, with revenue up 46% and organic revenue growth of 41%. Active records on The Work Number grew by a very strong 22 million records or 19% to 136 million records at the end of the year. Mortgage revenue was up 41%, almost 50 percentage points stronger than the underlying market. And non-mortgage revenue in Verification Services had organic growth of 41% driven by talent solutions with organic growth of over 100%. USIS also had a strong year. Non-mortgage revenue was up 16% with organic growth of 10%. Total revenue was up 4% with organic revenue growth of 2% despite the 7.5% decline in the U.S. mortgage market. In total, our U.S. businesses of Workforce Solutions and USIS, which together represent almost 80% of Equifax revenue, delivered 20% total and 17% organic growth with non-mortgage revenue growth of over 21% total and 15% organic, again, all well above our new long-term framework of 8% to 12%.
International also delivered a milestone in 2021 with their first year of revenues over $1 billion. Revenue grew 10% in local currency driven by double-digit growth in Asia Pacific, Canada and Latin America. In 2021, Equifax core revenue growth, the green section of the bars on slide five, grew a very strong 22% with fourth quarter revenue growth also a very strong 18%, both substantially above the new 8% to 12% long-term growth framework. Core organic revenue growth in 2021 was 18% and 13% in the fourth quarter, again, above our long-term framework. Non-mortgage organic growth in Workforce Solutions and USIS and growth in International drove almost 9% core organic revenue growth in 2021 and over 8% in the fourth quarter, excluding the impact of acquisitions and FX. Mortgage outperformance, primarily in EWS, drove the remaining 9% in 2021 and 5% in fourth quarter, respectively, of core organic revenue growth. As we move through '22 and '23, we expect to see continued strong and balanced core growth, reflecting the benefits of the -- from the strength of Workforce Solutions, new Equifax Cloud and accelerated NPIs.
And we expect continued strong non-mortgage performance from both organic growth and acquisitions as well as continued strong mortgage outperformance from Workforce Solutions. slide six covers our strong fourth quarter performance. Revenue of $1.25 billion was up 12% with organic constant currency growth of 6.6% despite a decline in the U.S. mortgage market of 21%, which was off a strong 23% growth a year ago in the fourth quarter. As I discussed earlier, core revenue growth was a very strong 18% in the quarter with core organic growth of 13%, again driven by outstanding performance at Workforce Solutions. Fourth quarter Equifax adjusted EBITDA totaled $403 million, slightly higher than expected. EBITDA margins of 32.2% were consistent with our expectations. The decline in margins versus last year was primarily due to the inclusion of cloud technology transformation costs of $47 million in our adjusted results in the fourth quarter, which were excluded last year. Adjusting for these costs, our margins were 35.9%. John will provide more -- a more detailed discussion on our '22 margins in a few minutes and the drivers of our up to 200 basis point margin expansion in 2022 that we're targeting.
Adjusted EPS of $1.84 per share was above the high end of our guidance range. As expected, adjusted EPS was down from last year and reflected the inclusion of cloud transformation costs of $47 million or $0.30 a share in our adjusted results in the quarter, which were excluded last year. Excluding these costs, adjusted EPS would have been up 7.1%, that consistent with our organic revenue growth. The acquisitions completed in 2021 were slightly accretive to adjusted EPS. And we expect substantial acceleration and accretion in '22 and '23 from the acquisitions as we complete the integrations. Workforce Solutions had another exceptional quarter, delivering revenue of $532 million with reported revenue growth of 29% and organic revenue growth of 17%. And this, of course, was delivered despite the 21% decline in the mortgage market in the fourth quarter and against very strong 61% revenue growth that they delivered last year in the fourth quarter. Non-mortgage revenue was up almost 50% with organic non-mortgage revenue up about 25%. Included in Workforce Solutions fourth quarter results is about $7 million from ID Watchdog, which was previously a part of GCS and is now part of Employer Services Business in EWS.
The strength of EWS and uniqueness and value of their TWN income and employment data was clear again in the fourth quarter. EWS is clearly our fastest-growing business and powering our results. Verification Services revenue in the quarter was $427 million, up 29%, with organic growth of almost 17%. The revenue from our Appriss Insights acquisition is included in Verification Services. Verification Services mortgage revenue grew 6% in the quarter, despite the 21% decline in the mortgage market with the Workforce Solutions outperformance driven by increased records, penetration and new products. Verification Services non-mortgage revenue represented just over half of total Verification Services revenue in the quarter. Total verifier non-mortgage revenue was up almost 65%, reflecting strong 30% organic revenue growth plus the addition of Appriss Insights in October. Non-mortgage organic revenue growth of 30% was very strong, particularly over last year's fourth quarter, which was up 15%. Our government vertical with the addition of Appriss Insights provides a broad set of solutions to federal, state and local governments.
These include solutions in support of government assistance programs, including food and rental support as well as the VINE victims notification service and other law enforcement solutions acquired as a part of Appriss Insights. The government vertical represented about 40% of total non-mortgage verification revenue in the quarter and delivered 25% total and over 15% organic revenue growth. Organic growth was driven by the continued growth in The Work Number and the continued expansion of state benefit programs. We also continue to see a ramp in volume for our new -- from our new Social Security Administration contract that went live last quarter. And we expect to see significant growth in volume as we move towards run rate levels through 2022. Talent solutions, which provides income, employment, educational background and medical certification verifications, incarceration, criminal background, medical sanctions and other information for the hiring and onboarding processes through our EWS Data Hub, had another outstanding quarter. The addition of Appriss Insights in October, educational information from the National Student Clearinghouse in August and significant growth in The Work Number during the quarter substantially expanded the EWS Data Hub, supporting continued customer expansion in new products.
Total talent solutions revenue represented about 40% of Verifier non-mortgage revenue in the quarter with total growth of almost 100% and organic growth of 50%. As you know, over 75 million people change jobs in the U.S. annually with the vast majority having some level of screening as a part of that hiring process. We've seen both the number and the frequency of job changes increasing in the current environment. Our ongoing addition of new data assets to the EWS Data Hub will enhance new product growth in this important vertical in the future. The non-mortgage consumer lending business, principally in banking and auto, showed strong growth as well, up over 50% in the quarter. Debt management with non-mortgage consumer lending grew over 30% in the quarter. Employer Services revenue of $105 million was up 28% in the quarter. And as you know, this is an important growth engine for Workforce Solutions that also delivers new TWN records. Combined, our unemployed -- our unemployment claims and employee retention credit businesses had revenue of about $54 million, up slightly from last year but down over 15% sequentially as we expected. Substantial declines in UC revenue in the quarter were offset by growth in ERC revenue, which, as a reminder, is our business that supports employers obtaining federal employee retention credits.
Employer Services non-UC and non-ERC businesses had revenue of about $50 million, up 60% versus last year with organic revenue growth of about 35%. Our I-9 business, driven by our new I-9 Anywhere solution, continued to show very strong growth, up over 50%. In the fourth quarter, our I-9 business made up about 40% of Employer Services non-UC and ERC revenue. In August, we acquired Health e(fx), which provides services to employers to help them ensure compliance with the Affordable Care Act, which we are now combining with our existing Workforce Analytics business. This combined Workforce Analytics business represented about 25% of employer non-UC and ERC revenue in the quarter. Workforce Solutions adjusted EBITDA margins were 54.6% for 2021 and have been consistently in the mid-50s over the past two years. As John will discuss later, we expect Workforce Solutions margins to be at or above the 54.6% delivered in 2021 in both the first quarter and in 2022. As we expected, fourth quarter '21 EBITDA margins in Workforce were 48.4% and were lower than those level -- than our historic levels due to three factors. First, Appriss Insights and Health e(fx) negatively impacted margins. As expected, initial margins from these acquisitions are dilutive to Workforce Solutions.
As we move through 2022 and drive synergies, this dilutive impact will be mitigated. Second, in the fourth quarter, EWS ramped one major and several smaller payroll processors record contributions to our Verifier database as well as integrated other data contributors to the data hub. As we discussed in the past, in the quarters where this occurs, we incur incremental costs related to boarding and ramping the new contributors. And as we've indicated, fourth quarter saw substantial new record additions, and these in-period costs impacted margins in the quarter. And third, our cloud transformation cost negatively impacted margins by about 200 basis points. Workforce substantially completed the Verifier cloud-native migration in the fourth quarter, so these costs will decline substantially going forward. We remain confident that Workforce Solutions margins will recover in 2022 and be above the 54.6% we saw in 2021. Rudy Ploder and the EWS team delivered another outstanding year and are well positioned to deliver a very strong 2022 and continue their above-market growth. EWS is our fastest-growing and highest-margin business. USIS had revenue of $434 million, which was about flat with the fourth quarter with the mortgage market down significantly and includes $47 million of USIS consumer revenue previously part of GCS, which was just about flat.
Total USIS mortgage revenue of $126 million was down 18% in the quarter, while mortgage credit inquiries were down 21%, about consistent with the expectations we shared in October. Outperformance versus the overall market was driven by stronger growth in Mortgage Solutions, including growth in services. Non-mortgage, non-consumer solutions revenue of $262 million grew almost 12% with organic revenue growth of almost 6%. In the fourth quarter, insurance continued to deliver double-digit growth. Commercial and Identity and Fraud were up single digits and FI, auto and telco were up low to mid-single digits. And direct-to-consumer increased over 10% in the quarter. For the full year, non-mortgage, non-consumer solutions revenue was up a strong 16% with organic growth in this category of about 10%. For 2021, USIS delivered double-digit organic growth across FI, insurance, Identity and Fraud and D2C as well as mid- to high single-digit growth in commercial and auto and telco declined slightly. Financial Marketing Services revenue, which is broadly speaking our off-line and batch business, had revenue of about $79 million, our highest quarterly revenue in history. This was up about 14% in the quarter.
The strong performance was driven by marketing-related revenue, which was up over 20%. Both risk and ID and fraud revenue were up about 10%. In 2021, marketing-related revenue, which grew more than 20% in each quarter, represented about 40% of FMS revenue; Identity and Fraud above 20%; and risk decisioning above 30%. The USIS commercial team delivered record wins, up over 25% versus last year and 5% sequentially in the fourth quarter. Their new deal pipeline remains very strong with overall -- with the overall pipe slightly higher than the third quarter. USIS adjusted EBITDA margins were 39.4% in the quarter, up over 50 basis points sequentially from third quarter. The decline from the fourth quarter in 2020 was principally driven by two factors. First, the acquisitions of Kount and Teletrack negatively impacted margins in the period. As expected, initial margins for these acquisitions are dilutive to USIS. As we move through 2022 and drive synergies, this dilutive impact will be mitigated. And second, cloud transformation costs negatively impacted margins by almost 75 basis points. As with EWS, these costs are expected to decline as we move through 2022. In 2022, we expect USIS margins to be flat to slightly below the almost 40% level we delivered in 2021.
International revenue of $288 million was up 6% and over 7.5% sequentially on a local currency basis. Included in International in the fourth quarter was almost $25 million of Consumer Solutions revenue in Canada and the U.K. that was formerly part of GCS, which was down about 6% versus last year. The lower growth in the consumer revenue in the fourth quarter was in Europe, which we expect to recover to high single-digit growth in the first quarter. Asia Pacific, which is principally our Australia business, performed very well in the quarter with revenue of $88 million, up about 9% in local currency. Australia and New Zealand consumer revenue remained flat versus last year. Our ANZ commercial business combined online and off-line revenue was up 9% in the quarter. And our HR verifications business in Australia was up a strong 37%. European revenues of $90 million were about flat in local currency in the quarter, but up over 20% sequentially. As a reminder, Europe had a very strong baseline from the fourth quarter of 2020 driven by the reactivation of debt services in the U.K. and large electronic notifications volume in Spain, a consequence of a change in legislation. Our European credit reporting business, which is about 2/3 of European revenue, was impacted by COVID lockdowns in the U.K. and up about 2%.
Commercial data off-line in analytics and scores saw strong double-digit growth in the quarter. And consumer credit reporting offerings grew high single-digit as lockdown measures eased. Included in the U.K. credit reporting business was $7 million from Consumer Solutions. Our European debt management business revenue was up over 30% sequentially but down 5% versus a very strong fourth quarter 2020. In December, Equifax was awarded a new 5-year extension of the U.K. government debt resolutions tender, a debt collections contract with an estimated contract value of $136 million with an incremental $90 million upside from sales of analytics and other CRA-related solutions. We've seen significant increases in debt placements from the U.K. government over the past several quarters that we expect should deliver strong growth in debt management revenue in the first half of 2022 for our U.K. business. Canada delivered revenue of $64 million in the quarter, up 6% in local currency despite a weakening Canadian mortgage market that was down 4%. Canada experienced strong growth in analytics and decisioning solutions with strong growth in fintech and traditional FI, while supply issues continue to impact their auto business.
Included in Canada revenue is $16 million of Consumer Solutions revenue. Latin American revenues of $45 million were up a strong 15% in the quarter in local currency, which was their fourth consecutive quarter of growth. Strong new product introductions over the past three years and pricing actions continue to benefit growth across our Latin American region. International adjusted EBITDA margins at 29.9% were up 320 basis points sequentially mainly due to stronger revenue and positive mix. Margins were down year-to-year due to costs related to the cloud transformation, both the cost of redundant systems and the inclusion in our adjusted results of the technology transformation costs, which were being excluded in 2020. Excluding these costs, margins were down slightly versus last year. Turning to slide seven. Workforce Solutions continues to deliver outstanding performance and is clearly our strongest and fastest-growing and most valuable business. As mentioned earlier, core revenue growth was up 38% in the quarter and 42% for the year with core organic revenue growth of 28% in the quarter and 38% for the full year of 2021.
These strong results were driven by the uniqueness of our TWN income and employment data, the scale of the TWN database and continued expansion of new products and markets, driven by outstanding consistent execution by Rudy and his team. 2021 growth of 39% is well above their 13% to 15% long-term framework, which we shared with you in November and of course, is on top of 51% delivered -- growth delivered in 2020. EWS' ability to consistently and substantially outgrow their underlying markets is driven by three factors. First, growing The Work Number TWN database. At the end of the fourth quarter, TWN reached 136 million active records, an increase of 19% or 22 million records from a year ago and included 105 million unique individuals, which is almost 70% of U.S. nonfarm payroll. This increase in records makes our TWN database more valuable to our customers from both higher hit rates and more complete employment histories. We are now receiving records every pay period from 2.5 million companies up from one million companies when we started 2021 and 27,000 contributors a short 2-plus years ago. Our strong momentum continued during the fourth quarter with the signing of three new exclusive agreements with major payroll processors that we expect to implement during 2022.
As a reminder, almost 55% of our records are contributed directly by employers where EWS provides comprehensive employer services like UC claims, W-2 management, I-9, WOTC, ERC, ACA and other HR and compliance solutions. Our acquisitions of HIREtech, i2Verify, Health e(fx) and now Efficient Hire, which we announced earlier this week, strengthen our ability to deliver these employer services both directly and through relationships with payroll processors and HR software companies, and of course, expand our TWN database. We still have substantial room to grow our TWN income and employment database and expect to continue to add new direct contributors as well as the additional -- addition of payroll processors and software partners on an exclusive basis to TWN in 2022. Beyond the just the -- just under 50 million nonfarm payroll records not yet in the TWN database, we've expanded our focus to data records from the 40 million to 50 million gig workers and around 30 million pension recipients in the United States marketplace to further broaden and strengthen the TWN database. You probably saw we also announced an expansion of our global footprint for Workforce Solutions with the launch of our new U.K. income and employment verification platform.
This adds to our existing Australia, Canada and India EWS business launches outside the United States. We've got plenty of room to grow TWN. Second growth lever for Workforce Solutions is increasing average revenue per transaction through new products and pricing our existing products to value, recognizing the depth of information TWN allows us to deliver to customers. Workforce Solutions' new product pipeline is rapidly expanding as our teams leverage the power of our new Equifax Cloud capabilities. And the third growth lever is by increasing penetration in the markets we serve and expanding into new markets and new verticals. For example, we continue to increase our penetration of the mortgage market. Workforce Solutions received an inquiry for over 60% of combined mortgages, up from 55% in early 2020. We have significant runway to grow penetration in the mortgage vertical. We are also in the early stages of penetrating the talent market where today, we receive inquiries in about one in 10 hires in the United States, plenty of room for growth. Growing system-to-system integration is another key growth lever in driving both increased penetration and increasing the number of polls per transaction.
During the quarter, about 76% of TWN mortgage transactions were fulfilled system to system, up over 2 times from the 32% in 2019, another great growth lever for Workforce Solutions. Workforce Solutions is performing exceptionally well with attractive above-market and above-Equifax growth rates and is highly accretive margins that we expect to power workforce -- power Equifax growth in the future. slide eight highlights core mortgage revenue growth performance of our U.S. B2B businesses, Workforce Solutions and USIS. Mortgage revenue grew 19% in 2021 in a down 7.5% market and off 80% revenue growth in 2020. Our combined U.S. B2B businesses outperformed the market -- the mortgage market by 28 points in 2021 and 16 points in the fourth quarter. This was driven by Workforce Solutions as they outperformed the underlying mortgage market by 51 points for the year and 27 points in the fourth quarter. John will cover our updated mortgage market outlook in a few minutes. We've reduced our outlook -- mortgage outlook for 2021 -- 2022 to down 21.5% versus our prior view of down 15%, reflecting the likely impact of higher interest rates.
We expect to offset a large portion of that impact with stronger growth -- stronger core mortgage revenue growth from EWS, from the strong TWN record additions, new products, system-to-system integrations and penetration. We now expect EWS will outperform the U.S. mortgage market by approximately 30 points, up 700 basis points from our prior view, and our combined U.S. B2B businesses of USIS and EWS to outperform the U.S. mortgage market by an amount approaching 20 points, which is up 400 basis points from our prior view. 2021 was a very strong year for new product innovation and a key priority of our team. As shown on slide nine, we delivered a record 151 new products, up from 134 last year -- I'm sorry, in 2020 and a Vitality Index of just under 9%, which is our highest vitality that we've achieved since 2018 and stronger than our 8% expectations when we started 2021. Our pace accelerated in the fourth quarter as we delivered 36 new products, positioning us well for 2022. In the fourth quarter, we launched significant new products we expect to drive growth in 2022 and beyond.
The EWS Talent Report education product provides all available postsecondary degrees instantly sourced from the National Student Clearinghouse via an exclusive Equifax ordering experience using a single SSN number input. This enhanced offering helps deliver a more efficient hiring process and the ability to make better informed hiring decisions with a holistic candidate view. Workforce Solutions' Priority Next Day VOE and Priority Two Day VOE products are our quick and seamless manual solutions that deliver verification of employment on the next business day or second business day following a client's request. These solutions are available to both our web and integrated clients and provide complete coverage when combined with our instant verification of employment solutions from TWN. The My Equifax Allow Access product, launched by USIS, allows consumers to be notified instantly when they submit an application to a participating lender that their file is frozen and with a few easy steps can unlock their files so their loan can be processed. And this is a win-win for both the lender and the consumer. The Spending Power and Affluence Index products, also launched by U.S. were introduced as new marketing targeting tools that utilize proprietary data to identify customers and prospects with the greatest capacity to spend on new products or services.
Spending Power estimates dollars available to spend after accounting for cost of living expenses, while the Affluence Index provides a score that differentiates households based on spending power and credit utilization. And then last, we continue to help our clients automate smarter digital customer acquisition decisions by enabling access to new data sources. Through the ID Matrix Enhancements in Australia, our clients can simultaneously identify previously undetected risk based on e-mail metadata and assess financial eligibility for a loan based on Australian residency status. Leveraging our new Equifax Cloud capability to drive new product rollouts, we expect to deliver a Vitality Index in 2022 of over 10%, which equates to over $500 million of revenue in 2022 from new products introduced in the past three years. The 10% vitality is up over 100 basis points from our strong 2021 new product results and aligns with our new long-term growth framework we provided at our Investor Day in November. Turning to Slide 10. USIS is leading the industry in offering flexible structure for BNPL providers to report consumer credit data onto the Equifax U.S. credit exchange through BNPL-specific business industry codes.
This new capability will provide Equifax customers and partners the flexibility to include the fast-growing BNPL data in credit decisioning or to exclude it based on their specific needs. Our new Equifax Cloud gives us the ability to quickly ingest and manage diverse data types and develop customer reports through Equifax One and custom scores using Equifax decisioning. Our data ingestion process is simplified by the new Equifax cloud, and time to market for products has substantially accelerated. As we move through 2022, you'll see this capability further accelerate our NPI-based revenue growth. Before I turn it over to John, I wanted to quickly discuss our guidance expectations for 2022. In October, we shared with you a framework for 2022 that included a midpoint revenue of $5.3 billion and adjusted EPS of $8.65 per share. As discussed earlier, several factors have impacted our view of 2022 compared to the framework we shared with you a few months ago. First, expectations for the U.S. mortgage market have changed meaningfully given the jump in the 30-year mortgage rates from 3% in September to 3.6% today. We now expect the U.S. mortgage market to decline 21.5% in 2022 as opposed to the 15% decline we expected back in October.
On its own, the 650 basis point further decline in the mortgage market negatively impacts our revenue by over $100 million. Offsetting that, we expect Equifax core revenue growth should reach 16% in 2022, over 200 basis points higher than what we reviewed with you in October. This is principally driven by the strong outperformance from Workforce Solutions, including the accelerated pace of new TWN record additions and the faster new product rollouts. This higher core revenue growth drives just over $100 million of additional revenue, offsetting the impact of the additional 650 basis points of mortgage market decline. Our strong core growth allows us to hold our 2022 guidance at the same level as the '22 framework we shared with you in October with our expectation that we will be at the midpoint of our '22 guidance for revenue of $5.3 billion and adjusted EPS of $8.65 per share.
Now I'd like to turn it over to John to provide more detail on our '22 guidance and assumptions and also provide our guidance for the first quarter. We're starting off strong in 2022, given our momentum from the fourth quarter.
