Table of Contents We operate in a competitive business environment that is impacted by technology advancements or new product development. Our reliance on outsourcing arrangements subjects us to risk and may disrupt or adversely affect our operations. vendor diversification policies or merger or consolidation among our clients, could significantly reduce our revenue and could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. In addition, certain of our businesses have higher client concentration than our company as a whole. As a result, these businesses may be disproportionately affected by declining revenue from, or loss of, a significant client. The markets for our products and services are intensely competitive. Our competitors vary in size and in the scope and breadth of the services they offer. We compete for existing and new clients against both third parties and the in-house capabilities of our clients. Many of our competitors have substantial resources. Some have widely-used technology platforms that they seek to use as a competitive advantage to drive sales of other products and services. In addition, we expect that the markets in which we compete will continue to attract new competitors and new technologies. These competitors and new technologies may be disruptive to our existing technology or service offerings, resulting in operating inefficiencies and increased competitive pressure. In order to compete with current and future technologies, we must continuously improve our network operating systems, programming tools, programming languages, operating systems, data matching, data filtering, and other database technologies. These improvements, as well as changes in client preferences or regulatory requirements, may require changes in the technology used to gather and process our data and deliver our services. Our future success will depend, in part, upon our ability to internally develop and implement new and competitive technologies, respond to changing client needs and regulatory requirements, and transition clients and data sources successfully to new interfaces or other technologies. In addition, many of our products and services compete within markets characterized by frequent new product and service introductions and changing industry standards. Without the timely introduction of new products and services, our products and services could become commercially obsolete over time, in which case our revenue and operating results would suffer. The success of our new products and services will depend on several factors, including our ability to properly identify client needs; innovate and develop new technologies, services, and applications; successfully commercialize new products and services in a timely manner; produce and deliver our products in sufficient volumes on time; differentiate our offerings from competitor offerings; price our products competitively, including taking into account changes in sales and use tax laws; and anticipate our competitors’ development of new products, services, or technological innovations. We cannot provide assurance that there will be market demand for our future product offerings or that we will successfully implement new technologies, cause clients or data furnishers to implement compatible technologies or adapt our technology to evolving client, regulatory and competitive requirements. We also cannot guarantee that we will be able to effectively allocate capital to new product development to create competitive products, as compared to our peers and new market entrants. Failure to launch new and differentiated products will have an adverse effect on our growth and our business. If we fail to respond, or fail to cause our clients or data furnishers to respond, to changes in technology, regulatory requirements or client preferences, the demand for our services, the delivery of our services or our market reputation could be adversely affected. We have outsourced various business process and information technology services to third parties, including the technology infrastructure management services agreement we entered into with NTT, the cloud services agreement we entered into with GCP, and the outsourcing arrangements we entered into with a subsidiary of Cognizant Technology Solutions, an affiliate of EPAM Systems, and affiliates of Tata Consultancy Services. Although we have service-level arrangements with our providers, we do not ultimately control their performance, which may make our operations vulnerable to their performance failures. In addition, the failure to adequately monitor and regulate the performance of our third-party vendors could subject us to additional risk. Reliance on third parties also makes us vulnerable to changes in the vendors’ business, financial condition, and other matters outside of our control, including their violations of laws or regulations which could increase our exposure to liability or otherwise increase the costs associated with the operation of our business. The failure of our outsourcing partners to perform as expected or as contractually required could result in significant disruptions and costs to our operations and to the services we provide to our clients, which could materially and adversely affect our business, client relationships, financial condition, operating results, and cash flow. Certain outsource arrangements contemplate the utilization of lower-cost labor outside the US in countries such as India, Poland, Ukraine, Mexico, and the Philippines. It is possible that the countries where our outsourcing vendors are located may be subject to higher degrees of political and social instability than the US and may lack the infrastructure to withstand political unrest, natural disasters, health crises, or other events impacting the local workforce. Such disruptions could impact our ability to deliver our products and services on a timely basis, if at all, and to a lesser extent could decrease efficiency and increase our costs. Fluctuations of the US dollar in relation to the currencies used and higher inflation rates experienced in these countries may also reduce the savings we planned to achieve. Furthermore, the practice of utilizing labor based in foreign countries has 20