As you know, we ramped our investments in product and innovation resources over the past 12 months to accelerate our new product roll outs, leveraging the new Equifax Cloud.
Another critical lever of our strategy is to reinvest our accelerating free cash flow in smart, strategic and accretive bolt-on acquisitions, that both, expand and strengthen our capabilities with a goal of increasing our revenue growth by 1% to 2% annually from M&A.
Revenue at $1.2 billion was the strongest quarterly revenue in our history.
In first quarter, constant currency revenue growth was a very strong 25% with our organic growth at 23%, which was also an Equifax record.
As a reminder, we're coming off a solid 13% growth in first quarter last year.
Our growth was again powered by our two U.S. B2B businesses, Workforce Solutions and USIS, with combined revenue up a very strong 38%.
Mortgage-related revenue remained robust, and importantly, our non-mortgage-related verticals grew organically by a very strong 16%.
The adjusted EBITDA margins of our U.S. B2B businesses were 52%, up 400 basis points with EWS delivering close to 60% margins.
As a reminder, Workforce Solutions and USIS are over 70% of Equifax revenue and 80% of Equifax business unit EBITDA.
First quarter Equifax adjusted EBITDA totaled $431 million, up 36% with over 250 basis points of expansion in our margins to 35.6%.
This margin expansion was delivered while including all cloud technology transformation costs in our adjusted results, which negatively impacted first quarter adjusted EBITDA margins by over 300 basis points.
Excluding cloud transformation costs, our margins would have been up over 500 basis points.
Adjusted EBITDA -- adjusted earnings per share at a $1.97 per share was up a very strong 37% from last year, which was also impacted by the inclusion of cloud transformation costs.
Adjusted earnings per share would have been $2.20 and up 54%, excluding these costs.
We continue to accelerate our EFX Cloud data and technology transformation in the quarter, including migrating an additional 2,000 customers to the cloud in the U.S. and approximately 1,000 customers Internationally.
In the first quarter, we released 39 new products, which is up from 35 launched a year ago in the first quarter, continuing the momentum from 2020 where we launched a record 134 new products.
For 2021, we expect our vitality index defined as revenue from new products introduced in the last three years to exceed 8%.
This is a 100 basis point improvement from the 7% guidance we provided on our vitality index back in February.
Our first quarter results were substantially stronger than the guidance we provided in February with over 90% of the revenue outperformance delivered in our two U.S. B2B businesses, Workforce Solutions and USIS.
Importantly, as we'll discuss in more detail shortly, over 60% of this outperformance in the U.S. B2B revenue was in our non-mortgage segments in both USIS and Workforce Solutions.
Mortgage revenue was also stronger than we expected despite the growth in U.S. mortgage market at 21% being slightly below our expectations from a slowing -- from slowing mortgage inquiries in late March, which have continued into April.
We're increasing our revenue guidance by $225 million to a midpoint of $4.625 billion and increasing our adjusted earnings per share guidance by $0.55 a share to a midpoint of $6.90 per share.
This includes our expectation that the U.S. mortgage market for 2021 as measured by credit inquiries will decline more in our February guidance of down 5% to a decline of approximately 8%.
Workforce Solutions had another exceptional quarter, delivering 59% revenue growth and almost 60% adjusted EBITDA margins.
Workforce Solutions is now our largest business, representing almost 40% of total Equifax revenue in the fourth quarter and is clearly powering our results.
Verification Services revenue of $385 million was up a strong 75%.
Verification Service mortgage revenue again more than doubled for the fourth consecutive quarter, growing almost a 100 percentage points faster than the 20% underlying growth we saw in the mortgage market credit inquiries in the first quarter.
Importantly, Verification Services non-mortgage revenue was up over 25% in the quarter.
Talent Solutions, which represents over 30% of verifier non-mortgage revenue almost doubled, driven by both new products and a recovery in U.S. hiring.
Government solutions, which represents almost 40% of verifier non-mortgage revenue also returned to growth driven by greater usage in multiple states of our differentiated data.
As a reminder, we continue to work closely with a social security administration on our new contract that we expect to go live in the second half and ramp to $40 million to $50 million of incremental revenue at run rate in 2022.
Debt management, which now represents under 10% of verifier non-mortgage revenue was, as we expected, down versus last year, but is stabilized and we expect to see growth in that vertical as we move through 2021.
Employer Services revenue of $96 million increased 17% in the quarter, driven again by our unemployment claims business which add revenue of $47 million, up around 47% compared to last year.
In the first quarter, Workforce Solution processed about $2.8 million UC claims, which is up from $2.6 million in the fourth quarter.
We currently expect a decline in the second quarter UC revenue of about 45% versus last year and a full year 2021 decline in UC claims revenue of just under 30%.
Our I-9 business driven by our new I-9 Anywhere solution continued to show very strong growth with revenue up 15%.
Our I-9 business is expected to continue to grow substantially to become our largest Employer Services business in 2021 and represent about 40% of non-UC revenue.
Reflecting the growth in I-9 and the return to growth of workforce analytics, we expect Employer Services non-UC businesses to deliver organic growth of over 20% in 2021.
Reflecting the power and uniqueness of TWN data, strong verifier revenue growth and operating leverage resulted in adjusted EBITDA margins of 59.3% and almost 800 basis point expansion from last year in Workforce Solutions.
USIS revenue was up a very strong 19% in the quarter with organic growth also a strong 17%.
Total USIS mortgage revenue growth of $177 million was up 25% in the quarter, while mortgage credit inquiry growth up 21%, was slightly below the 24% expectation we shared in February.
USIS mortgage revenue outgrew the market by 500 basis points in the quarter, driven by growth in marketing and new debt monitoring products.
Non-mortgage revenue performance was very strong with growth of 15% and organic growth of 11%, which is a record for USIS, and off a fairly strong first quarter last year.
Importantly, non-mortgage online revenue grew a very strong 16% in the quarter with organic growth of almost 11%.
Financial Marketing Services revenue, which is broadly speaking our offline or batch business was $53 million in the quarter, up almost 12%, which is also very positive.
The performance was driven by marketing related revenue, which was up over 20% and ID and fraud revenue growth of just under 10% as consumer marketing and originations ramped up.
In 2021, marketing-related revenue is expected to represent about 45% of FMS revenue with identity and fraud about 20% and risk decisioning about 30%.
The USIS team continues to drive growth in their new deal pipeline with first quarter pipeline up 30% over last year, driven by growth in both the volume and the size of new opportunities and NPI roll outs.
Kount's technology platform will migrate to the Equifax Cloud in the next 12 to 18 months, which will allow for the full integration of Kount and Equifax capabilities for new solutions, new products and market expansion in the fast growing identity and fraud marketplace.
USIS adjusted EBITDA margins of 42.9% in the first quarter were down about 180 basis points from last year.
Moving now to International, their revenue was up 3% on a constant currency basis in the quarter, which is the second consecutive quarter of growth in our global markets, but are still very challenged by COVID lockdowns and slow vaccine roll outs.
Asia-Pacific, which is principally our Australia business had a very good performance in the first quarter with revenue of $87 million, up 7% in local currency.
Australia consumer revenue continues to improve relative to prior quarters and was down only about 2% versus last year compared to down 5% in the fourth quarter.
Our Commercial business combined online and offline revenue was up a strong 9% in the quarter, a solid improvement from fourth quarter.
And fraud and identity was up 15% in the quarter following strong performance in the fourth quarter.
European revenues of $69 billion were down 5% in local currency in the first quarter.
Our European credit business was down about 5% in local currency.
Spain revenue was down about 1%, while the U.K. was down about 6% in local currency similar to the fourth quarter from continued challenging COVID environments.
Our European debt management business revenue declined by about 4% in local currency in the quarter.
Latin American revenues of $42 million grew about 1% in the quarter in local currency, which was an improvement from the down 1% we saw in the fourth quarter.
Canada delivered record revenue of $44 million in the quarter, up about 13% in local currency.
Consumer online was up about 3% in the quarter, an improvement from the fourth quarter.
International adjusted EBITDA margins at 28.2% were down 30 basis points from last year.
Excluding the impact of the tech transformation cost that we've included in adjusted EBITDA, margins were up about 200 basis points.
Global Consumer Solutions revenue was down 16% on a reported basis and 17% on a local currency basis in the quarter and slightly better than our expectations.
Direct-to-consumer revenue was up a strong 11% in the quarter, the third consecutive quarter of growth.
GCS adjusted EBITDA margins of 24.6% were up about 150 basis points.
We expect margins to be pressured to around 20% in the second quarter, reflecting planned cost to complete the migration of our consumer direct business, cloud transformations in the U.S., U.K. and Canada through our new Equifax cloud platform.
In the first quarter, Equifax core revenue growth, the green section of the bars on Slide 7, was up a very strong 20%, reflecting the broad-based growth across Equifax and this is up significantly from the 11% core revenue growth we delivered in the fourth quarter and well above our historic core growth rates.
The 16% organic growth in U.S. B2B non-mortgage revenue also drove our core revenue growth.
Importantly, our core revenue growth has accelerated over the past five quarters from 5% in first quarter of 2020 to 11% in the fourth quarter of last year and to 20% this quarter, reflecting the strength and resiliency of our broad-based business model, power of Workforce Solutions, the market competitiveness of USIS and benefits from our cloud Equifax -- our cloud data and technology investments and our increasing focus on leveraging the cloud for innovation in new products.
Workforce Solutions revenue grew a very strong 59% in the first quarter with core revenue growth accelerating to 46%.
As a reminder, the 59% growth is of 32% growth in first quarter of 2020.
At the end of the first quarter, the TWN database reached 115 million active users and 90 million unique records, an increase of 9% or 10 million active records from a year ago.
And as a reminder, over 60% of our records are contributed directly by employers that Workforce Solution provides employer services like, UC claims, W-2 management, I-9, WOTC, and other solutions too.
The Remaining 35% are contributed through partnerships, most of which were exclusive.
And as I mentioned earlier, we continue to work closely with the SSA, and expect to go live with our new solution in the second half of this year, which will deliver $40 million to $50 million of incremental revenue and run rate in 2022.
We are anticipating new products in mortgage, talent solutions, government, and I-9 in 2021.
Workforce and USIS outgrew the underlying U.S. mortgage market again in first quarter, with combined core growth of 48%, up from 37% in 2020, and in line with the 49% growth they delivered in the fourth quarter -- 49% core growth.
This outperformance was driven strongly by Workforce Solutions with core mortgage growth of 99%.
USIS delivered 5% core mortgage revenue growth in the quarter, driven primarily by new debt monitoring solutions with further support from marketing.
As Mark referenced earlier, U.S. mortgage market inquiries remained very strong in 1Q '21 and up 21%, but that growth was slightly lower than the 24% we had expected when we provided guidance in early February.
As shown in the left side of Slide 10, as mortgage rates increased over the past few months and refinancing activity continues, the number of U.S. mortgages that could benefit from a refinancing has declined to about $30 million.
Based upon our most recent data from 4Q 2020, mortgage refinancings were continuing at about $1 million per month.
As shown on Slide 11, we now expect mortgage credit inquiries to be about flat in 2Q '21 versus 2Q '20, and to be down about 25% in the second half of '21 as compared to the second half of '20.
Overall, for 2021, we expect mortgage market credit inquiries to be down approximately 8%.
This compares to the down approximately 5% we discussed with you in February.
We expect revenue in the range of -- revenue in the range of $1.14 billion to $1.16 billion, reflecting revenue growth of about 16% to 18%, including a 2.1% benefit from FX.
Acquisitions are positively impacting revenue by 2%.
We are expecting adjusted earnings per share in 2Q '21 to be $1.60 to $1.70 per share compared to 2Q '20 adjusted earnings per share of $1.63 per share.
In 2Q '21, technology transformation costs are expected to be around $44 million or $0.27 per share.
Excluding these costs that were excluded from 2Q '20 adjusted EPS, 2Q '21 adjusted earnings per share would be $1.87 to $1.97 per share, up 15% to 21% from 2Q '20.
2021 revenue of between $4.575 billion and $4.675 billion reflects revenue growth of about 11% to 13% versus 2020, including a 1.4% benefit from FX.
Acquisitions are positively impacting revenue by 1.7%.
EWS is expected to deliver over 20% revenue growth with continued very strong growth in Verification Services.
In 2021, Equifax expects to incur one-time cloud technology transformation costs of approximately $145 million, a reduction of about 60% from the $358 million incurred in 2020.
The inclusion in 2021 of this about $145 million in one-time costs would reduce adjusted earnings per share by $0.91 per share.
2021 adjusted earnings per share of $6.75 to $7.05 per share which includes these tech transformation costs is down approximately 3% to up 1% from 2020.
Excluding the impact of tech transformation costs of $0.91 per share, adjusted earnings per share in 2021 which show growth of about 10% to 14% versus 2020.
2021 is also negatively impacted by redundant system costs of about -- of over $65 million relative to 2020.
These redundant system costs are expected to negatively impact adjusted earnings per share by approximately $0.40 a share.
In 1Q '21, we delivered very strong core revenue growth of 20% and expect to continue to deliver strong core revenue growth in 2Q '21 of about 20%,and 16% for all of 2021.
In the first quarter, we delivered 39 new products, which is up from the 35 we delivered last year.
We are encouraged by this continued strong performance, especially following the record 135 new products we delivered last year.
First, Insight Score for credit card launched by USIS provides the credit card industry with a specific credit risk score created using credit and alternative data that predicts a likelihood of a consumer becoming 90 days past due or more within 24 months of origination.
As I mentioned earlier, we've increased our 2021 vitality index guidance from 7% by a 100 basis points to 8% as you can see from the left side of the slide is significant is a significant increase from about 500 basis points in 2020.
In the first quarter, we closed five acquisitions totaling $866 million across strategic focus areas of identity and fraud, Workforce Solutions, open data and SME.
You should expect Equifax to continue to make acquisitions in these strategic growth areas that offer unique data and analytics to our customers with the goal of increasing our top line by 100 to 200 basis points annually from M&A.
A primary example of this is that our alternative data assets such as utility and phone payment data provide lenders with a better picture of the approximately 30 million U.S. individuals who do not have traditional credit files or access to the formal financial system.
Over the course of this year we -- over the course of last year we decommissioned six data centers, over 6,800 legacy data assets and over 1,000 legacy applications.
And all of our 4,000 bonus eligible employees have a security goal in their annual MBOs.
Our 27% overall and 20% core growth in first quarter reflects the strength and resiliency of our business model, while still operating in a challenging COVID environment.
And as John described, are raising our full year midpoint revenue by 500 basis points to $4.625 billion and our earnings per share midpoint by 9% to $6.90 a share.
Our revised revenue estimate of 12% growth in 2021 at the midpoint of the range off a very strong 17% in 2020, reflects the resiliency, strength and momentum of the EFX business model.
Our increased 2021 growth framework incorporated our expectation as John discussed that the U.S. mortgage market will decline about 8% in 2021 and while operating in a still recovering COVID economy.
Our expectation for core revenue growth of 16% in 2021 reflects how our EFX 2023 strategic priorities are delivering.
Workforce Solutions had another outstanding quarter of 59% growth and will continue to power Equifax operating performance throughout 2021 and beyond.
USIS also delivered an outstanding quarter of 19% growth, highlighted by non-mortgage revenue growth of 15% and 11% organic non-mortgage growth.
And we're off to a strong start in 2021 with 39 NPIs in the first quarter, on top of the record 134 we launched in 2020.
We look for bolt-on acquisitions that will strengthen our technology and data assets and that are financially accretive with the goal of adding 100 to 200 basis points to our top line growth rate in the future.

Summary:
Adjusted EBITDA -- adjusted earnings per share at a $1.97 per share was up a very strong 37% from last year, which was also impacted by the inclusion of cloud transformation costs.
We are expecting adjusted earnings per share in 2Q '21 to be $1.60 to $1.70 per share compared to 2Q '20 adjusted earnings per share of $1.63 per share.
Excluding these costs that were excluded from 2Q '20 adjusted EPS, 2Q '21 adjusted earnings per share would be $1.87 to $1.97 per share, up 15% to 21% from 2Q '20.
2021 revenue of between $4.575 billion and $4.675 billion reflects revenue growth of about 11% to 13% versus 2020, including a 1.4% benefit from FX.
2021 adjusted earnings per share of $6.75 to $7.05 per share which includes these tech transformation costs is down approximately 3% to up 1% from 2020.
Our 27% overall and 20% core growth in first quarter reflects the strength and resiliency of our business model, while still operating in a challenging COVID environment.