ChrisCartwright: Yes. So let’s see, Sontiq, and then Argus. Well, the quick news on Argus, I think, is Argus has been completely integrated into the credit card and banking vertical within U.S. markets. And we’ve spent a lot of time on their next-generation platform, but also a lot of data hygiene and enhancement. So, we’ve built a nice pipeline. We’re getting some new sales and some conversions, and I continue to be very pleased that we’ve added this deeper, more authoritative view on how consumers are actually using their card to our overall foundation of credit information. Sontiq is growing very well. The key driver in Sontiq has been breach. As you know, in the fourth quarter, we reported really strong growth in consumer, but it was almost entirely fueled by some breach revenues.
So now that we’ve kind of matured our ability to sell this, I expect that we’re going to continue to get good growth. But again, that is a more lumpy episodic type product line, right? And so as we forecasted Sontiq for the year, we forecasted very solid growth from Sontiq, but not an extrapolation from what we experienced in the fourth quarter and a bit in the first quarter of this year.
Operator: Thank you. The next question is from Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Toni Kaplan: Thanks very much. I was hoping to ask about technology. You talked about the tech transformation, but just any update on AI and cloud, where you are today, any metrics we should be sort of looking at with regard to that and expense efficiencies and anything related? Thanks.
ChrisCartwright: Yes. So, let me survey the landscape on technology because multiple efforts that really check the boxes that you’ve talked about have converged into our next-generation foundational data management platform, which is OneTru. And think of that as all of the different data assets that we have, whether they be credit or marketing fraud mitigation or public records or converging on a common set of functionality within OneTru. Now part of that is data ingestion, identity resolution, basic analytics and certainly feeding all of that into the different product suites that we have, be it credit marketing, public records, fraud, et cetera, right? And I think we’ve provided some schematics, so you can better understand that.
But underpinning OneTru, we’re using machine learning, variants of artificial intelligence to speed the ingestion of data, the quality assurance, the governance, certainly, the identity resolution or even launching a machine learning as a service in our enhanced analytics suite. So OneTru now think of it as a comprehensive umbrella effort that’s going to give us the type of one-to-many leverage from our technology that we’ve been steering toward. And of course, it’s an entirely cloud architected cloud native platform, all the data is stored within a fabric in the cloud or a common central repository, if you will. And it’s also designed to be cloud agnostic because not all of our applications will go to the cloud. The majority of them will because the economics and the performance requirements make sense, but there are certain loads that we can handle more cost effectively in our internal private clouds, right?
So as we’ve explained, there’s a division there, and we’ve talked about that previously. So hopefully, that gives you some more flavor.
Toni Kaplan: Very good. Thanks
Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Heather Balsky with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Heather Balsky: Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask you about insurance, and I know it’s come up already on the call with regards to marketing. But I’m curious about kind of the other aspects of the business in terms of what you’ve been seeing in terms of insurers leaving state, what’s going on with shopping. It seems like the data that you guys put out, it was pretty good for the quarter. Just a broader environment for insurance and how you think about that for the rest of the year? Thanks.
ChrisCartwright: Yes, Heather. There’s probably worth refreshing kind of the basic dynamics that we’re seeing in insurance space. And look, as we all know, the past couple of years have been very tough for insurers. There’s been an increase in frequency and severity events and the replacement costs of skyrocketed, and it’s led to P&C carriers pulling back from higher-risk regions, whether that’s from wildfires or flooding or just a variety of natural disasters. And that’s meant reduced underwriting volumes. And what is underwritten is that at materially higher prices often that has to be absorbed by consumers. And also a reduction of marketing until the insurers could get a number of rate increases through different states in order to turn profitable on kind of individual policy economics.
There’s been a lot of progress in getting insurance priced right for this more challenging environment. And so we are seeing an increase in marketing. But still, the space is not fully healed, if you will. And I think that’s going to take more time, probably another year, but we do expect ’24 to be stronger on balance in insurance than ’23 was. You also mentioned shopping activity, and you’re right, and this is probably something that we all have some personal experience with. Upon renewal, consumers get sticker shock. And again, the price increases have been material for all the reasons that I talked about. And that does lead to some more shopping and shopping helps our business model. The other thing that’s helping is a bit of an improved marketing environment and continued growth of our driver risk solutions as insurers are looking for ways to combat the increasing prices of state motor vehicle reports.
Heather Balsky: That’s really helpful. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Today’s last question comes from Ashish Sabadra with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Ashish Sabadra: Thanks for taking my question. Thanks for providing those details around the India market, that’s very encouraging. I just wanted to drill down on the international in general, very strong momentum in the first quarter. The guidance also implies strong growth, but does moderate. I was just wondering if you can talk about puts and takes and any kind of conservatism that’s baked into the guidance. Thanks.
