Equifax Inc (EFX) — Q3 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Thanks and good morning. Welcome to today’s conference call. I’m Dorian Hare. With me today are Mark Begor, Chief Executive Officer; John Gamble, Chief Financial Officer. Today’s call is being recorded. An archive of the recording will be available later today in the Investor Relations section in the About Equifax tab of our website at www.equifax.com. During the call today, we will be making reference to certain materials that can also be found in the Investor Relations section of our website under Events and Presentation. These materials are labeled Q3, 2020 Earnings Release Presentation. During this call, we will be making certain forward-looking statements to help you understand Equifax and its business environment. These statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. Certain risk factors inherent in our business are set forth in filings with the SEC, including our 2019 Form 10-K and subsequent filings. Also, we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EPS attributable to Equifax and adjusted EBITDA, which will be adjusted for certain items that affect the comparability of our underlying operational performance. Certain revenue variances referred to in this call are based on adjusted revenue from the third quarter of 2019. These non-GAAP measures are detailed in reconciliation tables which are included with our earnings release and are also posted on our website. Now, I'd like to turn it over to Mark.

Thanks, Dorian, good morning everyone and thanks for joining our third quarter earnings call. Businesses and consumers around the world continue to face challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. I hope you and your families are continuing to be safe in managing this unprecedented environment. At Equifax, we continue to make the health and safety of our 11,000 employees a top priority. Turning first to the slide deck on page number four. Before I cover our very strong third quarter performance, I wanted to recap our focus over the past 3 years to transform Equifax to drive revenue growth, margins and cash in the future. Today, we saw unique industry and vertical customer and consumer challenges through our differentiated data assets and best-in-class advanced analytics. Most of our differentiated and most valuable data asset is our 2020 income and employment data. We are building an industry-leading global native cloud data technology footprint enabled by best-in-class cloud-native tools that will leverage our new cloud-based single data fabric. We’ve taken an industry leadership position in data security by changing our culture, our technology solutions and governance to ensure customer and consumer data is safer than it has ever been. We're relentlessly focused on a customer-first mentality, and we have a market-leading position in 25 countries. In building the new Equifax, we are executing on our $1.5 billion cloud, data and technology transformation that will move our data to a single cloud-native data fabric and integrate our legacy applications to the Google Cloud. We’re ramping up our investments in innovation and product resources to drive new product acceleration by leveraging our cloud investments. We’re strengthening our differentiated data portfolio with new unique data assets that complement our view of consumers. We’re leveraging advanced analytics, our patented AI technology and cloud-native technology to deliver multi-data solutions, and we’re differentiating our business portfolio by acquiring new capabilities and entering new areas of growth. Turning now to slide number five, the COVID pandemic has accelerated key market macros that are positive for Equifax and the industry. First, in our data-driven economy, it's clear that deeper insights from comprehensive data sources like the U.S. consumer credit database at Equifax and the use of multiple and alternative data types are critical for risk management, customer prospecting, employment verification, and an array of other activities engaged by our customers. More differentiated data was a positive macro prior to COVID-19. These economic impacts of the pandemic have only accelerated this trend around differentiated data. Differentiated data and analytics are more valuable than ever to our customers. Second, providers of credit are increasingly delivering real-time and advanced analytics that utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver incremental insights beyond core data. This trend has been accelerated during COVID, including instances where fraudsters have expanded efforts around fraud, account takeover or activities such as loan stacking. Identity and fraud solutions are increasingly valuable. Third, consumers, especially those from the digital age, have expectations that their financial and workplace interactions function digitally. We’ve seen this trend towards digital accelerate in the current COVID environment as face-to-face interactions have become increasingly rare. And lastly, Fintechs and alternative lenders are nimbly taking share of wallet from traditional financial institutions. We’ve seen this trend challenged somewhat in the near term due to economic pressures, including disruptions in capital flows, but we expect it will reaccelerate as we move into 2021. The Equifax team is laser-focused on delivering solutions to help our customers meet the challenging economic demands caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our new cloud-native data and applications are delivering integrated basic data solutions that we were unable to execute on in our legacy environment with unprecedented data, currency and speed. We're applying advanced analytics and alternative data assets towards the creation of trended insights that can better help our customers manage in this COVID environment where the consumer credit profiles are complicated by unemployment, salary reduction, furloughs and lower combinations. Our new cloud-based Luminate identity and fraud platform that uses these advanced analytics, along with machine learning and data orchestration, provides risk managers with greater insights to better manage fraud. And our solutions enable organizations across industries to adopt new realities using digital solutions to interact with their customers, whether it's an automotive dealership looking to convert online browsers to online purchasers without stepping into the dealership, or a credit union looking for a way to support members while operating with a reduced branch footprint, Equifax solutions help organizations of all types to drive new digital interactions. The COVID recession has accelerated key market macros around the value of broader data assets and real-time decisioning that will benefit Equifax in the future. Turning to slide six, it highlights how Equifax goes beyond the standard credit report to give lenders, employers, marketers, and other service providers a fuller, more complete 360-degree picture of a consumer's financial life to enhance decisioning. We are working with our customers to leverage the traditional credit file that lenders already rely on to understand the financial profile of candidates for loans and services. Instead of focusing only on financial activity or delinquency over the past three to six months, our trended data and analytics allow lenders to look at delinquencies over an extended period while closely monitoring indicators of financial distress, such as utilization increases and loaning combinations. We estimate that this deeper view of traditional credit reports may allow nearly 4 million consumers who have recently moved down from prime and super-prime credit categories due to credit policy tightening to move back up. Consumers that may be good candidates for cards or personal loans who may otherwise be overlooked as lenders execute their traditional recession playbook. Even more importantly, alternative data in the form of Equifax's unique twin income and employment information has become increasingly critical as the uncertain job market impacts underwriting and the ability of consumers to repay their loans. Unique data we provide helps lenders and consumers together to verify that a borrower is employed when a credit decision is made. The do-it-yourself alternative requesting hard-copy employment and income verifications can lengthen process workflows and cannot be verified. We estimate that the addition of twin income and employment data into credit decisioning can move more than 7 million consumers up into prime and super-prime categories so they can receive larger loans and other services with renewed lender confidence. Telco, utility, bank transaction and commercial data are further examples of Equifax's unique and differentiated data sets. Our cloud technology transformation is delivering a single data fabric that combines our multiple databases into one environment to enable more nimble innovation, insights and analytics, while at the same time enhancing regulatory compliance. We have incredible appetite for new and differentiated data, and we believe that more data delivers better decisions for our customers. I hope this gives you a strong sense of our broad range of strategic initiatives as we are transforming Equifax for the future. Turning now to slide seven, and our third quarter financial results. Equifax continues with very strong performance again in the third quarter. I'm very encouraged by the resiliency and strength of Equifax and how our teams around the world are meeting the challenges of COVID to help our customers, partners, and consumers. We are operating more effectively and efficiently with more energy and momentum than I've seen since I joined Equifax, and I believe we'll be a stronger, more resilient organization when this global pandemic is over. During the third quarter, we saw very strong revenue performance, particularly at Workforce Solutions and USIS, with broad-based improving revenue trends resulting in strong cash generation in EBITDA margins, while we continue to make incremental investments in technology, product, and innovation in security. Revenue growth of 19% is the highest quarterly growth in our history, and we eclipsed $1 billion of quarterly revenue for the first time in Equifax’s history, all huge milestones. I'll talk more in a minute about our financial results. We continue to make proactive customer collaboration a key priority in order to drive engagement, deal pipelines and new product innovation. During the quarter and past several weeks, I've been engaged with our key customers. This is the most challenging environment they've ever faced. Broadly, data is more valuable today than ever, and our unique data assets like TWN and Advanced Analytics are critical to helping our customers navigate through this pandemic. We continue to take advantage of our strong cash generation to accelerate our cloud data technology transformation investments. Under Bryson Koehler's leadership, and with the support of thousands of technology team members, we are making continued strong progress on our $1.5 billion technology transformation, and we are seeing new customers accessing our cloud-native solutions each week as our migrations accelerate. We're also continuing to expand our investments and resources around innovation in new products that are helping our customers manage today's challenging environment but also with an eye on beyond the pandemic. Our transformation into a product-led organization focused on innovation and enabled by best-in-class cloud-native data assets and world-class technology is becoming more real every day and will power our business in 2021 and beyond. Our team’s strong execution and outperformance in the third quarter is another very positive step forward for Equifax. Turning to slide eight, our financial results for the third quarter were strong and broad-based. Revenue of $1.07 billion was up 19% on a reported and local currency basis, which is well above our expectations in the framework of 10% to 12% that we shared with you in early September. M&A contributed less than 1% in the quarter. Our growth was again powered by our U.S. B2B businesses, USIS and Workforce Solutions, which had a combined revenue up a very strong 32.5% and combined adjusted EBITDA margins of over 50%. Workforce Solutions continued their exceptional performance driven by the value of the TWN database with revenues up 57% in the quarter, while generating EBITDA margins of 58%. This marked Workforce Solutions’ second consecutive quarter of 50% plus revenue growth, and USIS also exhibited strong revenue growth of 15%. Our strong U.S. B2B business performance continues to be powered by our focus on growth and our differentiated data assets. U.S. mortgage revenue was up almost 90% compared to the third quarter of 2019. U.S. mortgage market inquiries, our proxy for the overall mortgage market growth, were up 51% in the third quarter, driven by strength in both the new purchase and refinancing mortgage volumes. The driver of our U.S. B2B businesses substantial outperformance versus the market continues to be Workforce Solutions, where mortgage revenue more than doubled for the second consecutive quarter in a row. This was driven by the value that our customers place on our TWN income and employment data, the rollout of new products, the addition of new customers, improved customer penetration, and the expansion of our TWN data records. U.S. mortgage revenue growth of 57% also outpaced the market by 600 basis points. Our unemployment insurance claims business grew over 70% in the quarter with revenue of $50 million. In the third quarter, Workforce Solutions processed about 3.4 million initial unemployment claims, which is down from 7.5 million initial claims in the second quarter. Workforce Solutions continues to process roughly one in five U.S. initial unemployment claims. We expect unemployment claims to continue above 2019 levels in the fourth quarter, but at a reduced level compared with the third quarter. Excluding the growth from unemployment claims, which we would not expect to report in 2021, Equifax revenue growth was up a very strong 17% in the third quarter and is up over 12% year-to-date. Revenue growth drove adjusted EBITDA to $391 million, up 29%, with a 270 basis point expansion in our margins to 36.6%. We prudently balance cost controls while making target investments in our cloud transformation, new products, and data and analytics. Adjusted EPS at $1.87 a share was up a strong 26% despite incurring increased depreciation and amortization and incremental cloud cost of $0.15 a share, and increased interest expense of $0.06 per share from our second quarter bond offering. This exceeded our expectations in the framework of $1.50 to $1.60 we shared with you in September. USIS revenue of $386 million was up a very strong 15% in the third quarter with the M&A contribution less than 0.5%. Total USIS mortgage revenue of $179 million was up 57% in the quarter as both purchase and refinancing transactions remained strong throughout the quarter and better than our expectations of up about 45% from our call last month. Non-mortgage revenue also strengthened in USIS sequentially in the quarter at down 6%, up from down 7% in the second quarter. Importantly, we saw a substantial improvement in non-mortgage online revenue, which was down only 5% as compared to almost a 10% decline we saw in the second quarter. We saw a very good sequential improvement in banking, insurance, rental and direct-to-consumer, with insurance turning from down double digits to up double digits in the quarter. We are starting to see signs of customers restarting origination efforts with several major financial institutions revenue up versus 2019 for the first time in the pandemic, which is a positive sign for the future. In September, we saw positive growth in both insurance and direct-to-consumer, which although still negative, we saw improvements in banking and auto, both of which had only single-digit declines. Financial marketing services revenue, which is broadly speaking our offline or batch business of $46 million was down 9%, consistent with our expectations. Marketing-related revenue, which represents just under 40% of FMS continued to be down significantly, but did show some improvement as we move through the third quarter. Risk decisioning, which includes portfolio review activities and represents about 40% of FMS revenue was down slightly due to a large one-time project last year. In identity and fraud related revenue, which represents about 20% of FMS was flat. I'm very encouraged by the progress Sid Singh and the USIS teams continue to make, especially during these challenging economic times. They are competitive commercially and on offense. We continue to see very strong new deal pipeline growth at USIS, with total pipeline value up over 30% versus last year, driven by growth in the volume and average size of our USIS pipeline opportunities. Larger deal opportunities are a very positive sign as we look to accelerate USIS revenue growth. USIS adjusted EBITDA margins of 46% were up 160 basis points from last year and up 188 basis points sequentially. The improvements both year-to-year and sequentially were driven principally by the significant growth in high-margin online revenue. Turning now to Workforce Solutions. They had another exceptional quarter with revenue of $377 million up a very strong 57%. Year-to-date revenue is already over $1 billion at Workforce Solutions. Rudy Ploder and EWS team continue to leverage broad structural growth drivers, including new products, penetration, pricing, new verticals and record additions to fuel their above-market growth. EWS remains our most differentiated business, particularly in this unprecedented consumer environment where our TWN income and employment data is immensely valuable. Verification Service revenues at $301 million was up 63% versus 2019. Verification Services mortgage revenue more than doubled for the second quarter in a row, growing more than 80 percentage points faster than the 51% growth we saw in the mortgage market, credit imposed in the third quarter. Verification Services non-mortgage revenue was up about 4% in the quarter and slightly outperformed our expectations. Similar to the second quarter, we continue to see growth in government, healthcare as well as in the auto vertical as we increase penetration of TWN. During the third quarter, we saw a significant recovery in talent solutions, reflecting both increased U.S. hiring and the rollout of new products. Consistent with the second quarter, debt management continues to be very soft. Employer Services revenue of $76 million increased 37% in the quarter, driven by our unemployment claims business, which had revenue of $50 million and was up 70% compared to last year. Adjusting for the $20 million of incremental unemployment claims revenue in the quarter, Employer Services was flat with revenue growth in I-9 and onboarding services that was driven by the acceleration of I-9 Anywhere solutions offset by declines in our tax credit business. Transaction activity in our I-9 and onboarding products improved through the third quarter and sequentially versus the second quarter, driven by new hiring activity with our customers. Many of the large retail shipping and e-commerce companies utilize our I-9 onboarding products. In addition, we’re seeing a positive shift to our new remote I-9 product suite with new customer wins. Strong EWS Verifier revenue growth resulted in adjusted EBITDA margins in Workforce Solutions of 57.8%, a 900 basis point expansion from the prior year. Turning now to International. Their revenue of $218 million was down 5% on a constant currency basis, a substantial improvement from the down 15% in the second quarter and better than our expectations as shelter-in-place orders were lifted in many markets and economic activity resumed. Asia Pacific, which is principally our Australia business, had a very good performance in the quarter with revenue of $80 million, about flat in local currency versus last year and better than the down 5% we expected earlier in September. Australia consumer online revenue was down 5% versus last year, a significant improvement from the down double digits we saw in second quarter. Our Australian commercial business, combined online and offline revenue, was up 1% in the quarter, again, a nice improvement from the prior period. Fraud and Identity was also up over 15% in the third quarter versus the down 12% in second quarter. These areas of improvement offset declines in consumer marketing services, our consumer offline business and HR Solutions. Consistent with second quarter they continue to be down versus last year. New Zealand revenue was down just over 10% in the quarter, a significant improvement to be down 25% in the second quarter. European revenues of $59 million were down 13% in local currency in the third quarter. Our European credit business was down about 7%, with Spain performing slightly better than the U.K. In the U.K, consumer online revenue was down just over 10%, a significant improvement from the down 20% we saw in second quarter. Analytical and Decision Solutions revenue was almost flat in the quarter, a significant improvement from about down 20% in second quarter. Combined consumer online and analytical decision solutions represent about 75% of our U.K. CRA business. Similar to the U.S, our consumer offline business continues to show significant declines due to reductions in economic activity and credit originations. Banking revenue, driven by new wins with top 5 U.K. banks, was up over 25% in the quarter. Our U.K. banking team is seeing real momentum. Our European debt management business declined 20% in local currency, in line with our expectations, principally driven by government enacted policies that continued to temporarily halt debt collections due to COVID-19. U.K. government debt placement activities restarted in August. We expect fourth quarter debt management revenue to improve meaningfully as September debt placements were up 5 times versus pre-COVID levels. Turning to Latin America. Their revenue of $40 million decreased 6% in local currency in the third quarter, better than the down 9% we expected earlier in the quarter. Importantly, our Latin America revenues were much better than the down 14% we saw in the second quarter. In the quarter, Chile our largest country in Latin America, delivered positive revenue growth. And our Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay businesses showed significant improvements from second quarter, down about 4% in the quarter versus 2019. These markets continue to benefit from the resumption of economic activity and expansion of Ignite, the migration of customers to our global cloud-based interconnect SaaS decisioning platform. We're also seeing the benefit of the strong new product introductions over the past 3 years in the region. Canada revenue of $39 million was flat in local currency in the third quarter, a significant improvement from the down 13% in second quarter and in line with our expectations from our September call. Consumer online and commercial were both down about 5% in the third quarter, and both were a substantial improvement from almost 20% declines in the second quarter. Analytical and Decision Solutions were about flat in the quarter against substantial improvement from the second quarter. We delivered nice growth in Canada in our ID and Fraud business and Property Service businesses. Its combined with the improved performance of the other segments allowed us to improve to flat in the third quarter. International adjusted EBITDA margins of 32.3% were up 130 basis points from last year, despite the decline in revenue, principally reflecting benefits from cost actions taken in 2019 and strong expense management this year. Turning now to Global Solutions revenue, which was down 2% on a reported and local currency basis in the quarter. Our Global Consumer Direct business was up 6%, their highest growth since 2017. Our North American Consumer Direct business revenue was up a solid 6% versus 2019, while the U.K. Consumer Direct revenue was about flat. Importantly, we continue to see sequential subscriber growth in the U.S. and Canada, our two largest markets. Based on a continuation of these trends, we expect our Consumer Direct business to show positive revenue growth in the fourth quarter. Ben Anderson and the GCS team have done a good job returning our Global Direct business to a growth mode. Our remaining GCS business is principally our partner businesses as well as our benefits channel and event-based businesses decreased about 10% in the quarter, in line with our expectations. We delivered 11% growth in our benefits channel and event-based businesses, but this growth was more than offset by declines in our U.S. lead gen partner business as originations continue to be soft in the third quarter. GCS adjusted EBITDA margins of 24.8% decreased 10 basis points compared to the prior-year period due to increased marketing spend to drive future direct revenue and lower lead generation revenue, offset by one-time setup costs incurred during the third quarter of 2019 related to a new multi-year contract. Slide nine highlights the acceleration of revenue growth over the last several years and quarters, broken down between the growth drivers from the extraordinary unemployment claims revenue in 2020 from high unemployment and the strong U.S. mortgage revenue market to help you look through the impact of these strong market factors to the underlying Equifax core growth. As we discussed earlier in the third quarter, Equifax grew 19% overall with 200 basis points of growth from unemployment claim revenue and 11 points of Equifax revenue growth from the strong U.S. mortgage market. We are very pleased with the 6% core growth with strong sequential growth versus the minus 2% in second quarter, particularly with the headwinds from the COVID recession. Equifax is clearly outperforming U.S. expectations in the COVID recession. The impact of the strong U.S. mortgage market is highlighted in purple and reflects growth driven directly by the strong underlying U.S. mortgage market. To be clear, this is not the growth of Equifax U.S. mortgage revenue, but is instead only growth directly attributable to the U.S. mortgage market itself that we estimate based on mortgage market credit inputs. During the third quarter, 11 points of Equifax’s 19% growth was from the strong U.S. mortgage market. The impact of the extraordinary unemployment claims growth in 2020 is highlighted in blue. We are providing this given the dramatic unusual growth in the year we are seeing in 2020; that we expect to normalize over time. Equifax core growth is in green, and reflects the resiliency and breadth of our business performance in the COVID recession. Essentially this is the sum of the growth in our U.S. non-mortgage businesses, our international businesses and GCS and growth in our U.S. mortgage businesses above underlying mortgage market growth. Excluding the impact of the U.S. mortgage market and unemployment claims, Equifax core growth has expanded from 2% to 3% in 2018 and 2019 during the global financial crisis to 5% in the first quarter and now 6% in the third quarter while we’re still in the middle of the COVID pandemic. This performance reflects the resiliency and breadth of the Equifax portfolio. As I will cover on the next slide, it’s important to recognize that in the third quarter a significant portion of the 6% of Equifax core growth is being driven by our outperformance in our U.S. B2B mortgage vertical powered by Workforce Solutions core growth, which was a strong 30% and USIS, which was only down 1% on a core growth basis. This ability to substantially outgrow the underlying market is core to our business model and a substantial strength that should continue to provide significant benefits through the balance of 2020 and into 2021. Equifax is dramatically stronger in 2020 versus the 2008-2009 recession with revenue up 19% in the quarter and 12% in second quarter versus down 6% during the global financial crisis, again, reflecting the strength of today's Equifax portfolio. A continued strategic focus and strength of Equifax is our deep and broad array of products and solutions for the U.S. mortgage market and ability to consistently outgrow the underlying market. Slide 10 highlights this through our U.S. B2B businesses, Workforce Solutions and USIS. Both Workforce Solutions and USIS have consistently outgrown the underlying U.S. mortgage market. The driver of the acceleration of this outperformance over the past several years has been a tremendous growth in Workforce Solutions mortgage revenue, which exceeded mortgage market growth rates by over 20 points in 2019, accelerating to about 80 points of our performance this year. The key drivers of the strong Workforce Solutions performance include increased market penetration, which, by this, we mean both an increase in the percentage of mortgage applications for which the underwriter requests an income and employment verification from Equifax and an increase in the number of times a mortgage underwriter requested income and employment verification during the application process. Both of these drive increased TWN inquiries. As we view U.S. mortgage inquiries as a proxy for the overall market, an important metric we track is TWN inquiries as a percent of USIS credit inquiries. In the third quarter, this metric for the first time exceeded 50%, where we had one TWN mortgage market inquiry for every two USIS credit mortgage marketing inquiries. This metric has been growing substantially over the past three years and has more than doubled since early 2018. However, at only 50%, it shows that we have a lot of runway ahead of us to reach the same utilization for TWN as a credit file. We are actively working with our customers to continue to drive penetration through both expanded selling efforts across our customer ecosystem and increasing customer system-to-system integrations. The second is increased fulfillment rate. This is the percentage of times we receive a mortgage inquiry that we can’t fulfill and is driven by the growth in the TWN database. While we have real scale at over 50% of the non-farm payroll database, we only fulfill roughly 50% of our inquiries. As we add records via our immediately monetized data, this provides real leverage for Workforce Solutions. Adding new TWN contributors and records is a priority for the EWS team. And third is new products. We continue to introduce new Workforce Solutions products that provide greater value to our customers in terms of depth of data and frequency of polls with higher price points and margins. We expect NPIs to accelerate Workforce Solutions from the addition of new product resources and leverage from the cloud transformation. Workforce Solutions is clearly an almost powerful business. Slide 11 shows their above-market strong performance, which is highly accretive to Equifax revenue growth, margins and cash flow. Through the third quarter, overall Workforce revenue growth of $332 million or 48% through 13 points of Equifax revenue growth and Workforce core revenue growth of $163 million contributed six points of Equifax core revenue growth versus last year. The impact on Equifax EBITDA was even more powerful with Workforce Solutions delivering $572 million of Equifax EBITDA or 44% of our total EBITDA through the third quarter. Equifax is a powerful business and an important driver of Equifax results in 2020 and in the future. As shown on Slide 12, you can see the continuing growth in our TWN database, which has been a significant driver of value to our customers and the growth in Workforce Solutions. In the third quarter, we continue to add TWN records and delivered new TWN record growth of 6 million active records in the quarter, even in the high-end unemployment environment, which grew the TWN database over 111 million records, up from 105 million, we had at the end of first quarter and second quarter. TWN records are up has grown 20% versus 2019. We also had a significant milestone in the third quarter with contributors surpassing the 1 million level, this is our millionth company in the United States that are contributing to payroll records at Equifax up from 64,000 a year ago, which has moved the TWN database deeply into small ended market companies. With the TWN database now providing information on over 88 million unique individuals, firmly over half of the U.S. non-farm payroll, we view this as a catalyst for Workforce Solutions, given the increasing hit rates and uniqueness of the data. As we discussed previously, the Workforce Solutions team is expanding their focus on records beyond just W-2 payroll into areas like 1099 employees to give economy and pension income. The increasing depth of the TWN database is now over 415 million total records, had the additional benefit of increasing the completeness of an individual job history that we have in the database. This also significantly increases the value of the unique TWN data for both credit decisioning as well as in Talent Solutions and other applications. As a reminder, we generated almost 20% of our verification services revenue from inactive records that we built up over the past decade, which helps to provide a full picture of individual employment history. This also expands the uniqueness and value of TWN, which is other sources of income for employment data. And what has been the most challenging economic and health environment we faced in our lifetime, Equifax delivered exceptionally strong performance again in the third quarter, while investing in our cloud transformation and new products. We are focused on finishing 2020 strong while investing for 2021 and beyond. I will now turn the discussion over to John to discuss recent trends in revenue in our growing markets and results, as well as reducing other financial items.

Thanks Mark. I’ll focus on the financial results from continuing operations based on GAAP, though we will also discuss non-GAAP results. In the third quarter, general corporate expense was $155 million. After excluding one-time costs, the adjusted general corporate expense for the quarter was $109 million, which represents a $38 million increase from the third quarter of 2019. Expenses related to corporate functions like finance, HR, and legal decreased year-over-year, reflecting the cost control measures we outlined in April. The total general corporate expense increase stems mainly from higher incentive compensation costs in 2020, due to our robust and improving financial performance. We continue to practice disciplined cost management while investing in our technology transformation, data analytics, new products, and security. We plan to intensify investments in these areas in 2020 as we believe this will yield greater benefits. Other than these sectors, headcount additions have been below attrition, and discretionary spending has been curtailed. Company-wide, business travel remains very low. For the third quarter of 2020, the effective tax rate for adjusted EPS was 21.2%, which aligns with our expectations. We anticipate the tax rate for the fourth quarter and the full-year effective tax rate for adjusted EPS to be around 24%. In the third quarter of 2020, operating cash flow totaled $367 million and $645 million year-to-date, reflecting increases of $532 million and $566 million, respectively, compared to 2019. These increases highlight significant operational improvements in 2020 and lower litigation settlement payments in the third quarter and year-to-date, which were $341 million and $246 million, respectively. The timing of the remaining $347 million payment to the U.S. consumer restitution fund primarily depends on the resolution of ongoing appeals related to this case. Currently, we do not expect to make this payment until early 2021. Our liquidity and balance sheet remain very solid. As of September 30, we had $1.5 billion in cash and an available borrowing capacity of $1.1 billion on our bank credit facility. As Mark mentioned, our third-quarter results were significantly better than the trends we observed through August, as discussed in our September 8 Investor Call. The improved results were mainly driven by our U.S. B2B business. Notably, there was a significant increase in U.S. online revenue, with marked improvements in both non-mortgage and mortgage revenues. Additionally, we saw stronger results internationally in Australia and Canada. The strength in adjusted EPS reflects the margin effects of the increased revenue in September. Slides 13 through 15 detail revenue trends on a local currency basis from the second and third quarters, along with monthly data for July, August, and September. We are also presenting the trend data from October so far and its implications for the fourth quarter if these trends continue. For line items where daily trends are unavailable or irrelevant, we have not provided monthly actuals, instead showing data for the second and third quarters along with an estimate for the fourth quarter. The monthly actuals presented should be seen as directional. According to slide 13, U.S. B2B revenue growth was very positive in September, trending upwards from August and the third quarter of 2020 compared to the second quarter, with U.S. B2B revenue increasing by 32% year-over-year in the third quarter, up from 28% year-over-year in the second quarter. This growth was fueled by improved online revenue in the U.S. B2B sector. Mortgage revenue growth year-over-year also significantly strengthened in September versus August and in the third quarter, in both USIS and EWS. This growth took place against the backdrop of a robust mortgage market in the third quarter of 2019, which experienced a 20% increase over the third quarter of 2018. Importantly, online non-mortgage revenue growth trends also showed meaningful improvement in both September and the third quarter of 2020. USIS non-mortgage revenue declined by only 3% in September and 5% in the third quarter year-over-year, while EWS experienced year-over-year growth in online non-mortgage revenue for both September and the third quarter. The Workforce Solutions unemployment insurance claims business experienced substantial year-over-year growth in the third quarter, and we expect strong growth in UC again in the fourth quarter, with an increase of around 30% year-over-year. The far-right column on slide 13 illustrates year-over-year revenue growth trends through mid-October and their possible implications for fourth quarter revenue if these trends persist. A few reminders regarding these trends: the fourth quarter is typically the weakest for mortgage revenue, which lowers the overall mix of mortgage revenue in Equifax's revenue. The fourth quarter of 2019 saw a robust increase in U.S. B2B online revenue of approximately 18%, attributed to a strong growth of 34% in online mortgage revenue for that quarter. Again, starting from the bottom of slide 13, the revenue trends through mid-October suggest that U.S. B2B online year-over-year revenue is remarkably strong, with the growth rate approaching 30%. Both USIS online and EWS online verification services are expected to show strong growth, though slightly below the levels seen in the third quarter. Mortgage revenue growth rates will be somewhat weaker than in the third quarter, reflecting strong performance from the fourth quarter of 2019, especially in EWS. USIS non-mortgage year-over-year growth rates are projected to be roughly flat with those in the third quarter, while workforce non-mortgage growth is expected to decline slightly compared to the slight growth seen in the third quarter. Workforce Solutions employment services are anticipated to see year-over-year revenue growth of under 15%. However, the unemployment insurance payments business continues to grow, albeit at a rate slower than experienced in the third quarter. Financial Marketing Services revenue is expected to decline, in line with the levels we observed in the third quarter. Turning to slide 14, as Mark noted earlier, international performance improved significantly in all regions in the third quarter of 2020, with constant currency year-over-year revenue down only 5%. Trends from mid-October for international continue to improve, and so based on the revenue trends from mid-October continuing into the fourth quarter, we expect international revenue to be only slightly down in the fourth quarter. The October trends for GCS reflect the continuation of those previously discussed by Mark. In Consumer Direct, increasing total subscribers are anticipated to lead to a second consecutive quarter of global direct revenue growth in the fourth quarter. As mentioned last quarter, the decline in partner revenue noted in the third quarter is expected to rise significantly in the fourth quarter because of a dip in the lead generation-related partner business. We foresee this weakness in partner revenue persisting into the first half of 2021. As with our previous earnings calls, due to the ongoing uncertainties in forecasting the pandemic's economic impact, we will not be providing guidance for the fourth quarter. That said, we will offer a framework to help you think about our anticipated fourth quarter performance. Please refer to slide 15. If total Equifax revenue maintains the previously mentioned pace, the revenue for the fourth quarter could increase by approximately 9.5% to 11.5%, translating to a year-over-year increase of $84 million to $104 million, resulting in fourth quarter revenue of $990 million to $1.01 billion. Adjusted EPS for the fourth quarter at these revenue levels could range from $1.40 to $1.50 per share, a slight decrease from the fourth quarter of 2019. Slide 15 also provides a breakdown of how the revenue increase translates to an increase in pre-tax income and adjusted EPS compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. Importantly, with these adjusted EPS levels, Equifax would deliver over $350 million in adjusted EBITDA in the quarter. There remains a great deal of uncertainty regarding the pandemic's impact on the economy, our clients' business activities, and consequently our revenue and earnings. This range reflects the current variability in trends, not a prediction of outcomes. As I mentioned earlier, mortgage inquiry volumes have reached record levels in the third quarter, in line with strong origination market data. In addition to robust refinancing activity, new purchase volumes also hit record highs, showing an increase of 20% from last year. As we noted last quarter, Black Knight's estimates suggest approximately 18 million households currently benefit from refinancing at the average 30-year mortgage rate of below 2.9%. To put this into context, estimated refinance originations in the second quarter of 2020 were below $1 million per month. As Mark highlighted earlier, we are committed to accelerating our technology transformation completion, including raising investment levels in 2020. Currently, we estimate the one-time costs associated with Equifax's Technology and Data Security Transformation for 2020 to be around $340 million. We anticipate total capital spending to reach approximately $410 million for the year. Please note that starting in 2021, we will stop adjusting our financial results to account for one-time costs related to the cloud technology transformation. These one-time costs are expected to decrease significantly in 2021, with the highest expenses anticipated in the first quarter, tapering off throughout the rest of the year. Such one-time technology transformation expenses will impact development costs, general and administrative expenses, and cost of goods sold. We will continue to disclose these one-time tech transformation costs to allow you comparability with our financial results from 2017 to 2020. Now, I will hand it back to Mark.

Thanks, John. I’ll conclude with an update on our cloud technology and data transformation, as well as our intensified focus on new products. Equifax is making significant strides in our cloud data technology transformation. We are excited about the anticipated revenue, cost, margin, and cash benefits stemming from our cloud investments. With a unified cloud-native data fabric and a shared cloud-based infrastructure, we will innovate and create more robust product solutions and multi-data insights that are globally portable, enabled by our unique cloud data technology which will unveil new use cases and markets for both existing and new customers. Our cloud infrastructure will also allow us to speed up the development of new products, shortening timelines from months to weeks, ultimately enhancing the benefits our customers derive from these products and fueling our revenue growth. We are already witnessing improved system availability as we transition from our legacy technology to the cloud, and we expect this positive trend to persist. As we adapt to a global technology company, we believe that as more customers transition to the cloud, this operability will provide top-tier systems availability and streamline customer interactions. Additionally, we remain committed to becoming an industry leader in data security. Our security efforts are foundational to everything we do, bolstered by advancements in data governance, and we recognize that data security is a continuous effort alongside our industry peers and customers. We have now entered the final stage of our North American technology transformation, prioritizing customer migrations. We are continuing to migrate customers to our new cloud-based systems, which include our InterConnect Ignite and API capabilities. As of the end of the third quarter, we have successfully migrated over 4,800 U.S. customers in USIS, and International has completed migrations for around 6,500 customers. This is a significant increase from the approximately 1,200 customers migrated by the end of June. We anticipate this migration pace will accelerate in the fourth quarter, with over 10,000 U.S. migrations expected by the end of the year and remaining migrations scheduled for completion in 2021. We are continuously refining our development priorities and platform capabilities to ensure our customers can easily move to our new platforms. Our progress since the last earnings call in July has been promising. The initial and draft migration to GCP of our primary North American exchange data is nearly complete, and we expect to finalize the full migration, including all data ingestion processes, by year-end. This milestone accounts for approximately 70% of North America Online revenue. We are also advancing well in migrating our secondary U.S. exchanges, including U.S. and Canadian commercial risk exchanges, property, and data exchanges, which we aim to complete throughout 2021. Our investments in Europe through TAM and Australia in deploying a cloud-native Data Fabric and our Ignite Interconnect API analytical decision-making framework are also progressing effectively. Data Fabric is now operational in six global cloud regions. We successfully completed the initial migration of our eID identity validation system in the third quarter and have begun customer migrations, which we expect to finish by year-end. Our Luminate Cloud Identity is accessible to customers in the U.S. and Canada, and our cloud-native eID service is likewise available in the U.S. as part of our newly transformed cloud Luminate offering. We will regularly integrate additional data sources as we advance. While significant work remains, we are progressing strongly in our cloud data and technology transformation. We are enthusiastic about the future benefits to both our top and bottom lines. Our cloud-native data and infrastructure will set Equifax apart in today’s marketplace, and its value will increase as we complete our transformation. The planning team highlights our expanded focus on new product innovation, which is a critical part of our EFS 2020 strategy for the next chapter at Equifax. As I noted earlier, we are transforming our company into a product-led organization, powered by best-in-class cloud-native data and technology to drive growth. As we move through 2020, we are making significant progress toward our goal of launching approximately 110 new products, with around 85 new products already launched through September, and a robust pipeline in various stages of development. In the third quarter, we emphasized launching recession-focused products, including our response recovery offering which equips lenders and service providers with the necessary data and analytics to support their customers and safeguard their portfolios’ long-term health. Enabled by our market intelligence sandbox, response recovery gives lenders real-time consumer insights to enhance underwriting decisions during economic instability and enables proactive outreach to existing customers facing challenges. In USIS, we are building on our strengthening commercial business. In the third quarter, we launched B2B Connect, aimed at helping enterprises better identify, segment, and retain key business clients with insights on over 150 million global companies, including 53 million U.S. businesses and 80 million B2B contracts. B2B Connect offers a comprehensive view of businesses that companies require to qualify commercial prospects and deepen engagement with current customers. The commercial B2B product will be further enhanced by data from our recent acquisition of Ansonia, which adds unique commercial leasing data to our extensive suite of commercial offerings. In Workforce Solutions, we are concentrating on the hiring process, a major growth opportunity for our business given that there are over 70 million new hires per year in the United States. In the third quarter, we launched the industry’s first I-9 management service designed specifically for small and mid-sized businesses. Large enterprises have relied on Equifax's leading I-9 management solution, and now, with the launch of our I-9 starter and standard packages on an e-commerce platform, we are simplifying I-9 management for businesses of all sizes. With an automated I-9 platform, organizations can enhance their onboarding and I-9 compliance processes and improve the overall experience for new hires. Workforce Solutions is also introducing new solutions that support their financial and mortgage segments in 2020, including new mortgage trended income, employment, and multi-borrower products. New product innovation remains a crucial driver of Equifax's growth and a top priority for our team. We have broadened our focus and resources on driving new product innovation this year, particularly in response to the COVID recession. We will maintain our emphasis on new products and innovations as we transition into 2021, leveraging our cloud data and technology transformation for future growth. In conclusion, we still lack guidance for the fourth quarter due to notable uncertainty stemming from the COVID pandemic, as case numbers rise with many markets imposing shelter-in-place orders, which affects consumer confidence and economic activity. We also face the risk of a second COVID wave and possible increased lockdowns, as well as further impacts on employment, layoffs, and salary reductions. However, despite the challenges posed by COVID, Equifax continues to operate exceptionally well. Our strong business model demonstrates resilience while we invest in future growth. As we look ahead to the remainder of 2020 and into 2021 and beyond, we are confident in the drivers of our business model and growth strategy. The strong 19% growth in the third quarter showcases the robustness and adaptability of Equifax's business model. The healthy mortgage market and revenue from unemployment claims have provided incremental revenue and margin, enabling us to aggressively pursue our cloud transformation and invest in innovation and new products. Our robust performance has also strengthened our balance sheet, allowing us to focus on beneficial M&A opportunities. For the third quarter, we reported 6% revenue growth, excluding the impacts of the U.S. mortgage market and unemployment claims revenue, demonstrating a solid performance amid the COVID environment, even as our non-mortgage and international businesses remain pressured. We anticipate these markets will recover with the broader rollout of a COVID vaccine leading to improved economic activity. Workforce Solutions is undoubtedly a key component of Equifax's business, showing strong performance driven by multiple growth levers including new records, new products, and an improved product mix. Although the mortgage market has served as a positive catalyst this year for Workforce Solutions, their underlying 27% core growth to date, excluding unemployment claims and the mortgage market, reflects the strength and versatility of the Workforce Solutions business model. The introduction of 6 million new records in the third quarter will contribute to future revenue growth. Our new contract with the Social Security Administration, expected to generate $40 million to $50 million in annual revenue starting next year, is another positive factor in driving Workforce Solutions growth. We are also witnessing increasing value from our unique twin income and employment data, reflecting the scale and depth of our database. Regarding USIS, they too had a strong quarter thanks to mortgage growth. USIS has excelled in the competitive marketplace, with total third-quarter growth improving to a decline of just 1%, not accounting for the growth in the U.S. mortgage market. The USIS mortgage segment continues to outpace the market with core growth of nine points in the third quarter, up from six points in the prior quarter. Importantly, USIS's pipelines are at their highest levels since 2017, driven by a new commercial focus and the rollout of new products. Looking beyond the impacts of the COVID pandemic, we believe our non-mortgage revenues, which historically account for around 70% of USIS revenue, are positioned for growth as USIS continues to compete well in the marketplace. Our international business boasts a diversified portfolio of global operations, contributing over 20% of Equifax's revenue, and has historically promoted top-line revenue growth via new products and analytics. Unlike our U.S. B2B segments, most of our international markets lack mortgage businesses, hence have not experienced a significant decline in revenue growth during 2020, despite severe GDP declines affecting growth rates. We saw recovery in our international markets in the third quarter, with Australia and Canada maintaining stable performance versus last year, and we anticipate ongoing improvement as economic activity picks up. Lastly, our GCS Direct business is well-positioned for growth due to our disciplined investment approach. Our B2C segments are on an upward trend as we invest in new products and marketing, surpassing 7 million My Equifax members in the quarter, which provides a substantial base for cross-selling financial products. In summary, we are making significant strides in our cloud transformation and data transition, achieving key milestones in accelerating customer migration. We are energized about the significant benefits to both revenue and cost that this transformation will yield, including enhanced stability, faster market response times, and the ability to quickly reposition products globally, which we believe will strengthen our marketplace position. Additionally, our balance sheet is more robust in 2020 due to strong performance, enabling us to invest in our cloud data and technology transformation, new products, and data security, while actively exploring strategic acquisitions. As we continue to deliver above-market results during the COVID recession and prioritize investments for future growth, I am increasingly optimistic about our future as a leader in data, analytics, and technology. With that, operator, I will now open the floor for questions.

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to start on the margins. It looks really strong this quarter, especially within EWS and others have been marking up over time. Do you think what we saw on the margin side could be sustainable in a normalized environment? Or is there anything like one-time that we should be thinking about from this quarter?

Yes. It's a great question. You've seen over the last several years, and certainly in 2020, strong top-line performance from Workforce Solutions and that has certainly translated into margin growth. As you know, in our industry, internet business in particular, but in all our businesses, incremental revenue growth drives very attractive incremental margins. We've seen a very strong performance in 2020. We expect that this is to continue to perform in the future. And I think we're prepared to give guidance around margins for the future, because we can't do that broadly. But we've got a lot of confidence in the Workforce Solutions business, given the multiple levers that they have to drive future growth.

Got it. That's helpful. And then just one follow-up. I know you mentioned the increase, now that you're talking about one inquiry in twin for every two or just like mortgage origination inquiries. What do you guys find is the biggest gating factor to getting that moving that ratio higher? Is that more like lender awareness of those databases or is it just that you just need to keep pushing the snowball down the hill and adding more employers and records onto the network?

It's less about the employers and records and more about demonstrating the value of the product to our customers. We're launching new products in Workforce Solutions that offer multiple polls and a mortgage application package as a single purchase from Equifax, which is driving some of the engagement. Additionally, system integrations are crucial as they embed our solutions into customer workflows. Our dedicated team collaborates with customers to highlight the value of income and employment data. It's also important to connect with customers to increase their understanding of the predictability they gain. For mortgage originators, spending around $4,000 on a mortgage application means they want assurance that the customer will be approved. This typically starts with pulling the credit file to assess the customer's credit profile, which is standard practice now. More sophisticated mortgage originators are beginning to pull income and employment data up front to gauge current employment and often do this multiple times. These practices represent various opportunities, particularly in the mortgage sector, and this strategy also applies to other industries. Our database serves as a catalyst, covering well over 50% of non-farm payroll, making the hit rates valuable across numerous verticals beyond just mortgages.

Good morning. Maybe I can just follow-up there. The mortgage digitalization, I guess, is the big theme out there. And we're seeing a lot of acquisitions from Equifax. There's a whole bunch of stuff going on out there. And I just, besides trying to get more penetration, the way you just described it, like how do you look at the opportunity with that team? And do you have plans with other solutions, and the name. Would you just talk there would be helpful?

Yes. Obviously, we have a large mortgage business. We're benefiting from the market tailwinds. We've got a real focus on rolling out new products, particularly in Workforce Solutions, but also in USIS, our UDM products are another growth area for us. And I think what we're pleased with is the fact that both USIS and Workforce Solutions are outgrowing the mortgage market. Now, how do you do that? Will you do that with new products, new solutions, blogging more usage of your products, in particular, that's around the twin income and employment database that are pulled more frequently. And then just the system, the system integrations where we still have a lot of one way to work with our customers to convert them from dialing in and keying into the system on an individual applicant basis to pull the income employment data to go into system integrations, which is as you know, is more on the credit file side. But it's one that's an opportunity on the income employment side. And that really we've seen big lifts in utilization, when we are embedded in the workflows and the income employment data. We've had great progress in adding those in the third quarter in 2020.

Got it. And then just a check on the Tech Transformation. When you started the program, you're talking about $1.25 billion is the number and it's a pretty big number you talk maybe you left some buffer room in there. But last time you said 1.4, and I think you said it was a 1.5 billion program. So I was just curious, that incremental 250 million like, I guess where did we go over budget? Or where's that extra spend are being required today?

Yes. And that's been an area that we've been clear that we're going to invest more. We see opportunities to do that to accelerate the transformation. And just to be clear, and I know you notice, but $1.5 billion we now talk about is the incremental spend in 2018, 2019 and 2020. So that's going to be behind us. And that's how much we're going to spend through the end of the year. We'll obviously be spending money on our technology as we go into 2021 and beyond that, that's going to be in our one rate spend versus the incremental spend that we talked about. And with our strong financial performance in the second half of 2019, we started investing more in the Tech Transformation. And as we continued in 2020 and performed so strongly during the COVID recession, we've made strategic decisions to accelerate our spend in order to drive it more rapidly. We think that's the right thing to do, because of the sizeable benefits that we expect to get from the transformation.

Good morning. Just two questions. The first one I didn't catch if you gave the total Equifax third quarter revenues related to mortgage. So I'd like that if you could. And then looking at slide 13, under EWS, non-mortgage, September stood out to me how it jumped forward. And then, sort of October kind of normalized back to July, August rates. Could just talk a little bit about that September come forward?

So, in terms of total mortgage revenue, total mortgage revenues are a little over a third of Equifax total revenue. So that's the best way we'll estimate that. In terms of September non-mortgage for EWS, we have substantial business with government and other participants. And so it can just be a little choppy. And obviously, the underlying revenue base isn't that large. So just movements between months can result in different growth rates between the months quite understood, so that's why we indicate that when you're looking at those numbers you can consider them indicative. And that's why we focus a lot more on the quarterly numbers.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for taking my question. Just wanted to ask broadly about how you're thinking about the trends in consumer credit. On one hand, we've heard some lenders talking about borrowers, more borrowers exiting forbearance, and defaulting, which could impact the appetite for lending. But on the other hand, you have recovery trends taking hold and the economy with things opening up. So wanted to hear broadly about that? And specifically, also just wanted to ask about the sort of better September non-mortgage number within USIS. And then October getting a little bit more in between like, where September and the other months of the third quarter are?

The first half of the question, Toni, it’s obviously complicated. It’s an economic event, a health event, like we've never seen before. Kind of broadly, the consumer is still fairly strong. Obviously, there's high-end employment, but some of the stimulus benefits that help the consumer. When we talk to our customers, their delinquencies are not increasing yet because they're making minimum payments, and they're not behind on credit card payments, etc., kind of talking broadly. So I think that's kind of what's happening so far. I think what we're all watching is what happens as stimulus dollars run out. Are they going to be using dollars, either pre or post the election in a few weeks, it's tough to see. Where's unemployment going to go? And on top of that, what's the timing of the vaccine? How quickly will it be deployed across the population, which obviously will drive economic activity? It's just a lot of challenging messages there we try to work through. What's underlying that, from our perspective, is that data is more valuable than ever for our customers. And that's what we're seeing. Obviously, our performance is quite strong. Data is being used to try to look through to who are the customers, the consumers that are still working. Who are the consumers that can take a line increase or having a mortgage refi or what is the data? So I think that's a positive for our industry. But you point out, which is why we struggled providing guidance for the fourth quarter of 2021. At this stage, it's still quite uncertain about where that consumer is going.

In terms of your question on September at minus three and in the quarter minus five and our discussion around mid-October at above minus five. Again, the above minus five and above minus three to us are very similar numbers, right? And September's monthly data. So I think the important fact is we are seeing an improvement trend. We expect that we're seeing our business improve in non-mortgage, and we're very happy with that trend. But as we look through the rest of the fourth quarter, above 5% can be a little bit on either side of 5%.

Thank you. Good morning. And appreciate all the helpful disclosure in the deck. The number one investor question I receive on Equifax is whether revenue and earnings growth is peaking given this extraordinary mortgage market expansion, which clearly benefits both USIS and EWS, along with the increased appetite for TWN employment and income data during the COVID pandemic. And clearly there are a number of positives that will sustain, the 20% growth and TWN records, the growth in NPI, the growth in the pipeline. But as you start to think about a 2021 framework, you want people to start with that 6% core growth from the third quarter. What are some of the parameters that you're starting to think about as you frame your own views for 2021?

David, we're aiming to sidestep specific guidance for 2021, but we intentionally shared details about our strong performance over the past year, especially highlighting the significant revenue from incremental unemployment claims, which is noteworthy. This revenue will likely normalize in 2021 as unemployment is expected to decrease and claims don't continue at the same rate. Moving on to the U.S. mortgage market, there are challenges in forecasting what's ahead for 2021, but the foundational elements appear positive for the mortgage sector. The Federal Reserve has indicated they plan to maintain record-low interest rates through 2021, which bodes well for both refinancing and purchase volume. We've observed a notable increase in purchase volume in the U.S. over the last 90 days, with consumers actively looking to buy homes or upgrade to larger ones, particularly in suburban areas. While we aren't making specific predictions, there seems to be potential for growth in this macro environment. On the refinance side, many consumers have not yet refinanced their mortgages, providing multiple quarters of benefits to come. Regarding 2021, it's important to recognize that many businesses are still facing challenges due to the COVID pandemic, and we aren't providing forecasts for the upcoming year. However, if a vaccine leads to a more normalized recovery, that should be advantageous for Equifax. Our non-mortgage businesses in the U.S. are showing positive trends, particularly in our RTGS operations. Workforce Solutions has proven its value, and the performance of USIS, which was recovering from a previous cyber-event during the pandemic, has been strong across both mortgage and non-mortgage sectors. We expect this performance to speed up as economic recovery unfolds, supported by growing deal pipelines and the demand for increased commercial activity. Workforce Solutions has many operational levers to optimize and achieve revenue growth, including a new SSA contract expected to generate $40 million to $50 million annually starting next year. The unique income and employment data we have is also proving to be more valuable due to its scale and depth. Turning to USIS, they had a robust quarter, particularly in the mortgage segment, and have been successful in the marketplace. Their revenue is performing well despite the overall challenges of the COVID recession. The total growth for the third quarter improved to a decline of only 1% when excluding the growth from the U.S. mortgage market. The USIS mortgage business is continuing to outperform, with a notable increase in core growth in the third quarter compared to the second. Importantly, USIS's pipeline is at its highest level since 2017 due to new commercial focus and product launches. As we move beyond the pandemic's effects, we anticipate growth in our non-mortgage revenues, which historically account for about 70% of USIS's revenue. In our international markets, which represent over 20% of Equifax revenues, we have a balanced portfolio that has historically driven revenue growth through new products and analytics. Unlike our U.S. B2B businesses, most of our international markets don't have mortgage operations, so they haven't experienced the same revenue decline in 2020. We've begun seeing recovery in international markets, with stability in Australia and Canada, and expect improvements as economic activity resumes. Additionally, our GCS Direct business is set to continue growing thanks to our disciplined investments. Our B2C operations are also improving as we invest in new products and marketing, and we've surpassed 7 million My Equifax members this quarter, which gives us a solid base for cross-selling financial products. In summary, we're achieving significant progress in our cloud and data transformations, having marked milestones in customer migrations. We're optimistic about the substantial benefits in revenue, cost, and cash flow that will arise from this transformation, including enhanced stability and speed to market, which should strengthen our market position. Our balance sheet has been fortified in 2020 due to strong performance, enabling us to pursue investments in our Cloud Data and Technology Transformation, new products, and data security, as well as explore strategic acquisitions. As we continue to outperform the market amid the COVID recession and focus on future growth, I am excited about our prospects as a leading data, analytics, and technology firm. Now, operator, let's open the floor for questions.