Equifax, Inc. (EFX) Business Profile

What it does

Equifax is a global data, analytics and technology company founded in 1899 and headquartered in Atlanta. It collects and organizes consumer and business information—including credit, income, employment, assets, telecommunications and utility payments, education, criminal-justice and demographic data—and uses analytics, artificial intelligence and software to turn that information into decisioning tools and processing services.

Its customers use the resulting information to decide whether to extend credit, verify an applicant’s identity, assess fraud risk, market financial products, manage existing accounts, hire employees, administer benefits or recover debt. For example, a mortgage lender can use its credit-file and income-verification services in underwriting, while a government agency can validate employment and income when administering social-service programs.

The company has three operating segments. Workforce Solutions verifies employment, income and related records and supplies employer-services workflows. U.S. Information Solutions, or USIS, supplies consumer and commercial credit information, identity, fraud, mortgage, analytics and marketing services in the United States. International provides comparable information, analytics, fraud, consumer and collections services outside the U.S.

It also sells services directly to consumers, including credit monitoring and identity-protection products. Its principal employment-and-income platform, The Work Number®, held about 209 million active employment records at December 31, 2025.

How it makes money

Equifax earns revenue mainly by selling data, analytical insights, software-enabled decisions and outsourced business processes. Many offerings are priced per transaction: a lender, employer, background screener or government agency pays when it requests a verification, credit report, score, fraud check or other decisioning service. Other offerings use subscriptions, projects, batch-data deliveries or recurring business-process service arrangements.

Workforce Solutions combines Verification Services with Employer Services. Verification Services is primarily transaction- and subscription-based, while Employer Services provides transaction- and subscription-based human-resources offerings such as unemployment-claims administration, I-9 and onboarding services, tax-credit services and Affordable Care Act compliance management. Employer contributors generally are not charged to add payroll data to The Work Number®.

USIS has Online Information Solutions and Financial Marketing Services. Online Information Solutions is principally transaction-based, including credit reports and scores, identity management, fraud detection and consumer monitoring. Financial Marketing Services is principally project- and subscription-based, providing batch credit and consumer-wealth information for customer acquisition, cross-selling and portfolio-risk management. International offers a varying mix of similar services by country, plus collections and recovery-management support.

In 2025, revenue increased 7% from 2024; management said on the Q3 2026 call that third-quarter revenue was $1.693 billion. The largest client accounted for approximately 3% of total revenue in 2025.

Customers and how it sells

Equifax serves financial institutions, corporations, government agencies, employers, lenders, resellers and individual consumers. Its end markets include mortgage, financial services, talent and employment, federal, state and local government, automotive, telecommunications, e-commerce, health care, retail, insurance, commercial services, identity and fraud. The largest client represented approximately 3% of total revenue in 2025.

The company sells primarily through a direct sales organization organized around vertical markets and geography. In the U.S., mortgage, financial, government and automotive teams sell products from both USIS and Workforce Solutions. It also reaches customers through alliance partners, joint ventures and resellers, and sells consumer services through e-commerce channels.

The U.S. generated 77% of revenue in 2025. International clients generated 23% of total revenue that year. Equifax operates across North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific, with operations in 20 countries and joint-venture investments in Brazil, Cambodia, Malaysia and Singapore. Its international operations include Canada; the U.K., Spain and Portugal; Australia, New Zealand and India; and markets across Latin America.

Suppliers and costs

Equifax depends on data supplied by employers, payroll systems, consumer and business data sources, customers and other third parties. The Work Number® relies on payroll data received from over 4 million organizations. The company also licenses data, software, technology and intellectual-property rights from other companies; it licenses credit-scoring algorithms and the right to sell scores derived from those algorithms for a fee.

Its cost of services includes royalties, revenue shares, purchased data and information, and labor supporting delivery. In 2025, cost of services increased $126.9 million, primarily because of higher royalty, revenue-share and purchased-data costs, partly offset by lower temporary-labor costs. Selling, general and administrative expenses increased $163.7 million, primarily from people costs, litigation expense and a settlement accrual.

The business does not manufacture physical products. It uses cloud-based and outsourced technologies, which can expose operations to disruption. It also licenses its information to competing firms and licenses information from certain competitors to support tri-bureau and other products in the U.S. mortgage market.

Competitive position

Equifax describes its markets as highly competitive. In Verification Services and Employer Services, competition includes employers performing work in-house, lenders obtaining verifications directly from employers, payroll processors, accounting firms, human-resources consulting and management providers, and numerous online and offline providers. The company says these activities have low barriers to entry.

In credit information, direct-to-consumer products, fraud prevention, risk management and decisioning, competition includes global consumer credit-reporting companies, identity-protection providers, providers of free credit scores, analytical-software companies and specialized providers. Experian and TransUnion provide information used in Equifax’s U.S. mortgage tri-merge reports. Commercial-information, marketing, debt-collection, account-management and recovery-platform providers also compete in particular product categories and geographies.

The company identifies protection of information and systems, proprietary data tools, data depth and coverage, price, product functionality, response times, client support, existing market penetration, technology and product innovation as competitive factors.

Our reading: The employment-and-income dataset behind The Work Number® is a meaningful data advantage because it is fed by more than 4 million organizations and supports automated verification requests [item1].

Our reading: Its analytical and delivery capabilities are a moderate moat, but the company faces competition across every category and says Verification Services has low barriers to entry [item1].

Our reading: Mortgage products have an embedded competitive dependence because Equifax licenses information from competitors for tri-bureau reports [item1a].

Growth opportunities

Equifax’s growth plan centers on expanding data assets, adding products and capabilities, increasing customer penetration and making acquisitions. The company uses its cloud-native data fabric, analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning to build and deploy data products and decisioning services. Management said on the Q3 2026 call that more than 80% of year-to-date new products used EFX.AI capabilities and that the new-product Vitality Index exceeded 17% in the third quarter.

Workforce Solutions is seeking growth from more employment and income records, new verification use cases, government contracts and greater use of its data in talent, consumer finance, auto, card and personal-loan markets. Management said on the Q3 2026 call that Workforce Solutions had 223 million active records and 110 million unique individuals or Social Security numbers, compared with 250 million income-producing Americans identified as a potential record-addition opportunity. The company sizes its government verification market at $5 billion.

Management said on the Q3 2026 call that it signed more than $550 million in annual contract value with state agencies in 2026, including about $150 million of new business and $400 million of renewals, with the benefit principally expected in 2027. It also said that its EWS government pipeline was about twice the prior-year level.

In International, the company expects its proposed acquisition of Círculo de Crédito to expand it into Mexico, subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Management said on the Q3 2026 call that it expects the transaction to close in the fourth quarter of 2026.

Structural risks

• Security and data protection: Security breaches or disruptions to information-technology infrastructure could compromise company, consumer and customer data; interrupt operations; create remediation costs; and expose the company to legal liability and reputational damage.

• Regulation and litigation: The company is subject to evolving consumer-reporting, privacy, consumer-protection, data-protection and artificial-intelligence laws across its markets. Noncompliance, new requirements, regulatory examinations, enforcement actions and private litigation could affect results.

• Mortgage exposure: Demand for mortgage services is sensitive to mortgage rates and transaction activity. Management said on the Q3 2026 call that U.S. mortgage revenue was expected to be about $80 million below its July guidance for 2026 because of weaker mortgage-market conditions.

• Mortgage-market rules and pricing: Changes in the use of tri-bureau reports, the potential move to a bi-merge report, score pricing and score choice can affect revenue. Management said on the Q3 2026 call that a GSE-related move to bi-merge could have roughly $80 million of potential annual revenue impact based on 2026 revenue.

• Third-party dependencies: The company depends on externally supplied data, licensed scoring algorithms, cloud services and other outsourced technologies. Interruptions, changing terms or pricing, and failures by providers can raise costs or disrupt services.

• International operations: Sales and operations outside the U.S. face political, economic, currency, compliance, staffing, tax, data-privacy and cross-border operating risks.

Bottom line

Our reading

Our reading: Equifax is a data and workflow business whose revenue is tied to repeated customer decisions—especially credit, employment, income, identity and fraud checks—rather than to physical-product sales [item1, item7]. Its position rests on data collection, The Work Number® employment-and-income platform, analytical tools and direct customer relationships, while competition remains broad and some verification markets have low barriers to entry [item1]. Mortgage-rate sensitivity, regulatory obligations, data-security exposure and third-party data and technology dependencies are central constraints [item1a, call_prepared].