Argos owner's credit-monitoring arm Experian in £106m deal

Credit checking-to-catalogue retailing group GUS today said its credit-monitoring arm Experian had paid £106m (€153.9m) for a company that provides address management software.

GUS, which owns Argos, said Experian had acquired QAS, whose products enable organisations to instantaneously pinpoint customers’ addresses from their house numbers and postcodes.

QAS has 8,800 customers worldwide across sectors ranging from financial services and insurance to retail and the public sector. About 90% of its revenues come from the UK.

Experian International’s chief executive John Saunders said the purchase of QAS was consistent with Experian’s global strategy of buying complementary businesses that supply new products, new data or entry into new markets.

“Experian and QAS will bring to the market sophisticated data integrity solutions, further enhancing the quality of our clients’ data about their customers,” he said.

The software made by QAS works across many channels including call centres, the internet and point-of-sale equipment, GUS said.

QAS, which employs 370 people – 270 of which are in the UK – was expected to benefit from continued growth in the UK market, especially in the government sector, and from international expansion.

There were also opportunities to cross-sell Experian’s products to QAS customers in areas such as marketing information, customer data integration, authentication and marketing databases.

QAS is the leader in its market in the UK and also has growing international operations in north America, Australia, the Netherlands, France and Singapore.