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DATE
Wed, Oct. 28, 2026
CALL PARTICIPANTS
- Head of Investor Relations and Capital Markets - Andrew Thut
- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer - Rohit Kapoor
- Chief Financial Officer - Maurizio Nicolelli
TAKEAWAYS
- Total Revenue -- $634 million, representing a 19.7% increase year over year and 17% growth on an organic constant currency basis.
- Adjusted Diluted EPS -- $0.62, representing a 28.5% increase year over year driven by higher profitability and operating leverage.
- FY 2026 Revenue Guidance -- $2.43 billion to $2.44 billion, representing 16% to 17% reported growth and 15% on an organic constant currency basis.
- FY 2026 Adjusted EPS Guidance -- $2.34 to $2.36, representing 20% to 21% year-over-year growth.
- Data and AI-led Revenue -- grew 36% on a reported basis and 31% organically, now accounting for nearly two-thirds of total company revenue.
- Digital Operations Revenue -- declined 1.7% year over year as the company intentionally transitioned operations work into the Data and AI-led category.
- Total Operations Growth -- 12% year over year, combining Digital Operations and Data and AI-led operations to reflect the underlying health of the operations business.
- Insurance Segment Revenue -- $208.5 million, up 15.5% year over year driven by expansion in data management and analytics for existing clients.
- Health & Life Sciences Revenue -- $160.4 million, representing 18.6% growth year over year led by higher volumes in payment integrity services.
- BCM and Diversified Industries Revenue -- $153.5 million, up 27% on a reported basis and 16.8% organically, including contributions from the iMerit acquisition.
- International Growth Markets Revenue -- $111.6 million, up 21.1% year over year with momentum in banking, energy, and utilities verticals.
- iMerit Revenue Contribution -- $15.3 million, representing two months of operations following the close of the acquisition at the end of July.
- SG&A Expenses -- 21% of revenue, down 30 basis points year over year due to improved operating leverage.
- Adjusted Operating Margin -- 19.3%, a 10-basis-point decline year over year reflecting investments in technology and future ramp-ups.
- Effective Tax Rate -- 20.4%, down 170 basis points year over year due to increased profitability in lower-tax jurisdictions.
- Operating Cash Flow -- $209 million for the first nine months of the year, compared to $205 million returned to shareholders in the same period.
- Capital Expenditures -- $44 million for the first nine months, with full-year guidance set at $58 million to $62 million.
- Share Repurchases -- $205 million, representing the repurchase of approximately 6.6 million shares during the first nine months of 2026.
- Debt Capacity -- $1 billion total capacity following the expansion of the credit facility to a $400 million term loan and a $600 million revolver due 2031.
- Net Debt Position -- $180 million, based on $333 million in cash and short-term investments against $513 million in total debt.
- Organic Headcount Growth -- 11% year over year, significantly lower than the 17% organic revenue growth as AI drives increased productivity.
- New Client Wins -- 14 new logos added in the third quarter and 30 added year to date, highlighting the momentum of the AI-first value proposition.
- Pipeline Growth -- double-digit increases in pipeline creation as clients commit to larger, integrated Data and AI deals.
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RISKS
- Nicolelli reported that gross margin in the Banking, Capital Markets, and Diversified Industries segment declined 80 basis points sequentially, noting the pressure was due to "investment that we are making, particularly in our analytics AI services area, to really ramp up a number of engagements."
- Kapoor warned that "the margin story on this is a little bit unclear at the current moment" regarding the transition of traditional operations to AI-embedded workflows, noting that commercial contracts with clients are not shifting as rapidly as the technology integration.
SUMMARY
ExlService Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXLS) reported accelerated organic growth and raised its full-year guidance as enterprises shift from AI experimentation to scaled implementation. Management reported that Data and AI-led services now represent nearly two-thirds of total revenue, with growth broad-based across all four operating segments. The company completed the acquisition of iMerit during the quarter, establishing a full-stack AI capability that includes model training and validation alongside existing data engineering and operational expertise. The company also announced leadership transitions to ensure continuity following the departure of the head of Insurance and Health & Life Sciences, while expanding its credit facility to $1 billion to support further targeted acquisitions and share repurchases.
- Kapoor noted that agentic AI is starting to go mainstream, stating, "Our growing portfolio of agentic AI offerings helps clients accelerate decision-making, improve operational efficiency, and unlock greater business value."
- The company won a significant engagement with a leading U.K. bank to migrate its analytics environment to a cloud-native architecture using the proprietary EXLdata.ai solution.
- Management launched the iMerit Scholars platform, which connects more than 30,000 domain experts to fine-tune and evaluate AI models, extending the company's reach across the entire AI life cycle.
- In the Health & Life Sciences segment, management is transitioning Payment Integrity services from post-payment auditing to pre-payment analytics, allowing for the review of 100% of claims.
- Kapoor reported that the velocity of deals is improving, noting that "the decision-making cycle time for clients... seems to be coming down" for Data and AI-led engagements.
- The company confirmed that the International Growth Markets segment remains a significant untapped opportunity, with management actively considering acquisitions to gain additional talent and geographic reach.
INDUSTRY GLOSSARY
- Agentic AI: Autonomous software systems capable of executing complex business workflows and making decisions to achieve specific goals with minimal human intervention.
- Payment Integrity: A suite of analytics and operational services used by healthcare payers to ensure medical claims are paid accurately, identifying errors, fraud, and waste.
- Constant Currency (CC): A financial calculation that fixes exchange rates to eliminate the impact of currency fluctuations when comparing financial results between periods.
- iMerit: An EXL subsidiary specializing in data labeling, model training, and fine-tuning solutions for large-scale AI development.
- Model Alignment: The process of fine-tuning AI models to ensure their outputs and behaviors consistently match human intent and specific business requirements.
Full Conference Call Transcript
Operator: Hello, and welcome to the ExlService Holdings Inc. third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. We ask that you please hold all questions until the completion of the formal remarks, at which time you will be given instructions for the question and answer session. Also, as a reminder, this conference is being recorded today. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I will now turn the call over to Andrew Thut, Head of Investor Relations and Capital Markets.
Andrew Thut: Thanks, Ronnie. Hello, and thank you for joining EXL's third quarter 2026 financial results conference call. On the call with me today are Rohit Kapoor, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Maurizio Nicolelli, Chief Financial Officer. We hope you've had an opportunity to review the third quarter earnings press release we issued yesterday afternoon. We've also posted a slide deck and investor fact sheet on our Investor Relations website. As a reminder, some of the matters we'll discuss this morning are forward-looking. Please keep in mind that these forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements.
Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those factors set forth in yesterday's press release and in EXL's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time. EXL assumes no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call today. During our call, we may reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide useful information for investors. Reconciliation of these measures to GAAP can be found in our press release, slide deck, and investor fact sheet. With that, I'll turn the call over to Rohit. Rohit?
Rohit Kapoor: Thank you, Andrew, and good morning, everyone. EXL delivered another strong quarter, with revenue of $634 million, up 20% year-over-year, and adjusted earnings per share of $0.62, an increase of 29%. Organic growth accelerated to 17%, with every segment growing more than 15%, reflecting broad-based momentum in our business that has strengthened throughout the year. As enterprises navigate the complexities of AI implementation, their investment areas naturally lend themselves to EXL's expertise, solutions, and services. Our deep understanding of client workflows and domain context, combined with our competencies in data and AI engineering, is creating a tailwind as we help clients solve the acute challenge of making AI work effectively in the enterprise.
This dynamic is translating directly into our financial performance. Data and AI-led revenue grew 36% on a reported basis and 31% organically in the third quarter, now representing almost 2/3 of EXL's total revenue. We saw strength across data management, AI services and solutions, payment integrity, Data and AI-led operations, and with our recent acquisition of iMerit, our model training solutions are also gaining traction. Importantly, the strength in Data and AI-led revenue is being accompanied by healthy growth in our underlying operations business. Digital Operations revenue declined 1.7% year-over-year. We addressed this last quarter, but it bears emphasizing.
This decline is by design, and it reflects the evolution of our business mix as we continue to embed AI into operations work, which migrates it into our Data and AI-led category. Total Operations, which includes both Digital Operations and Data and AI-led operations, grew 12% year-over-year. We believe that Total Operations remains the best way to evaluate the underlying health of our operations business. As we embed more AI into the workflows we manage, those engagements become more intelligent, more IP-led, and higher value. Our operations relationships give us the domain context, data access, and workflow knowledge to identify new AI use cases and deploy them even faster. That deepens client relationships and drives recurring growth for EXL.
We saw strong performance across each of our four operating segments. Insurance grew 16% year-over-year, accelerating for the third straight quarter, led by our continued strong performance in Data Management and Analytics. Our win rates have improved meaningfully this year as we go to market with an AI-forward value proposition. As insurers move forward on AI adoption, they first need a strong data foundation and then a partner to implement AI at scale. We've been successful in capturing that demand on both fronts, and that's what's been driving our results. Health & Life Sciences grew 19% year-over-year, led by continued strength in payment integrity. Additionally, our mid-market and regional health plan strategy is emerging as a meaningful growth engine.
We are gaining traction across multiple service offerings, including both payment integrity and domain solutions focused on cost containment and AI integration into workflows. We believe this growing demand for our solutions and services in the mid-market reflects a secular trend. International Growth Markets grew 21% year-over-year, accelerating from approximately 13% growth in the first half of the year. Momentum was driven by clients deepening their engagement with EXL. We saw particular strength in Banking, as well as in energy and utilities, where we launched a large deployment embedding our AI workflows across back office and collections. We are pleased with the progress we are making in this important growth segment for our company.
Banking, Capital Markets, and Diversified Industries grew 27% year-over-year, which includes the initial contribution from our recent acquisition of iMerit. Banking growth was led by particularly strong momentum across mid-tier banks and fintechs. We have also added 30 new logos this year as our AI-first data-led value proposition continues to gain traction. Taken together, these results demonstrate that our growth is not dependent on a single vertical offering or client cohort. Demand for our capabilities is broad-based as enterprises increasingly seek partners that can combine data, AI, and deep operational expertise to transform complex workflows. In the third quarter, pipeline creation grew double digits as clients expanded their relationships with us and committed to larger integrated deals.
Over the past several quarters, we have spoken about the evolution of AI in the enterprise as projects have moved from experimentation and proof of concept to scaled implementation. Now we are seeing the next chapter of that evolution roll out with agentic AI starting to go mainstream. Let me share some proof points from the quarter. Working closely with Google, we won an engagement with a leading U.K. bank to rebuild its analytics environment on Google Cloud, migrating it from SAS to a cloud-native architecture. We are using our agentic EXLdata.ai solution to deliver the work.
Our differentiation from established engineering-led providers was the strength of our domain depth, our agentic approach to accelerating the migration, and our partnership with Google. This win was also aided directly by the investments we have been making in our partnership channel. Also, during the quarter, EXL strengthened its agentic AI leadership with enhanced solutions across finance, life and annuities, and payment integrity in areas where we control the full AI stack. Our growing portfolio of agentic AI offerings helps clients accelerate decision-making, improve operational efficiency, and unlock greater business value. Notable launches included our Agentic Suite for finance, along with enhancements to LifePRO Agentic Suite for life and annuities, and Payment Integrity with AI for healthcare payers.
These offerings extend the capabilities of our industry platforms, giving our clients a path to agentic AI adoption with increased business value. We closed on the iMerit acquisition at the end of July and have since been actively integrating the business. In the two months since closing, iMerit contributed $15.3 million of revenue to the quarter, with notable growth across high tech and healthcare, combined with continued momentum with frontier AI labs. The launch of the iMerit Scholars platform, which we announced earlier this week, is also a significant development. Scholars bring together more than 30,000 vetted domain experts across 118 countries to fine-tune, evaluate, and validate AI models.
The platform integrates recruiting, matching, management, and global payments into one system. For EXL enterprise clients, together with iMerit, we extend our reach across the AI life cycle. We have begun bringing iMerit's capabilities to our enterprise clients, and we are encouraged by the initial commercial activity. Let me briefly touch on some recent leadership changes at the company. As announced in September, Vivek Jetley, President and Head of Insurance, Health & Life Sciences, accepted an opportunity to become a CEO elsewhere, and his last day with EXL was earlier this week.
Vivek has been a close partner and friend for nearly 20 years, and on behalf of everyone at EXL, I want to thank him for his many contributions and wish him every success in his new endeavor. Bhupender Singh, President and Head of International Growth Markets, has expanded his responsibilities to include leadership of our Insurance segment. Raghav Jaggi, an Executive Vice President who has spent more than 23 years helping to grow EXL's insurance practice, will lead U.S. Insurance and report to Bhupender. Nikhil Dhingra, also an Executive Vice President, has been with EXL for more than 18 years and will now lead Health & Life Sciences, reporting directly to me.
EXL has a deep and experienced leadership bench, and these executives have played integral roles in building the businesses they will now lead. That depth provides continuity for our clients, employees, and shareholders. The strength of our third quarter performance gives us the confidence to raise our full-year outlook. We now expect 2026 revenue to be in the range of $2.43 billion-$2.44 billion, representing 16%-17% growth on a reported basis, and 15% on an organic constant currency basis, up from our prior guidance of $2.39 billion-$2.415 billion. We are also raising our adjusted diluted EPS guidance to a range of $2.34-$2.36, representing approximately 20%-21% year-over-year growth, up from our prior guidance of $2.25-$2.29.
We believe we are well-positioned as agentic AI becomes mainstream in the enterprise. With iMerit, EXL now operates across the full AI stack, building the data foundation, training and fine-tuning models, and embedding AI into the workflows that we run for our clients. Our Data and AI-led business is expanding, Total Operations continues to grow, and our performance is broad-based across segments. As always, I want to thank our clients and partners for their continued trust and collaboration, our employees for their commitment and innovation, and our stakeholders for their continued support. With that, I will turn the call over to Maurizio to provide additional details on our financial results and outlook.
Maurizio Nicolelli: Thank you, Rohit, and thanks everyone for joining us this morning. I will provide an overview of our financial performance for the third quarter and nine months ended September 30th, followed by our revised outlook for 2026. We delivered a strong third quarter with revenue of $634 million, up 19.7% year-over-year on a reported basis and 17% on an organic constant currency basis. Sequentially, revenue grew 6.6% on a reported basis and 4.1% on an organic constant currency basis. Adjusted EPS was $0.62, a year-over-year increase of 28.5%. All revenue growth percentages mentioned hereafter are on a constant currency basis unless otherwise stated. Turning to revenue by segments.
The insurance segment grew 15.5% year-over-year with revenue of $208.5 million and 5.4% sequentially. This growth was driven by continued expansion in existing clients, which includes higher volumes. The insurance vertical, including revenue from International Growth Markets, grew 16.5% year-over-year with revenue of $246.4 million. The Health & Life Sciences segment reported revenue of $160.4 million, representing a growth of 18.6% year-over-year and 17.2% on an organic basis. This year-over-year growth was driven by higher volumes in our payment services business and expansion of existing client relationships across other lines of business. The Health & Life Sciences vertical, including revenue from International Growth Markets, grew 18.8% year-over-year, with revenue of $160.9 million.
In the banking, capital markets, and diversified industries segment, we reported revenue of $153.5 million, representing a reported growth of 27% year-over-year and 16.8% on an organic basis. Sequentially, banking, capital markets, and diversified industries segment grew 5.5% on an organic basis. This growth was driven by new client wins, expansion of existing client relationships, and incremental revenue from the iMerit acquisition. The banking, capital markets, and diversified industries vertical, including revenue from International Growth Markets, grew 24.7% year-over-year with revenue of $226.6 million. In the International Growth Market segment, we generated revenue of $111.6 million, up 21.1% year-over-year on a reported basis, and 20% on an organic basis. Sequentially, International Growth Markets revenue grew 6.3%.
This growth was primarily driven by higher volumes from existing clients across insurance, banking, capital markets, and diversified industries, as well as new client wins. SG&A expenses were 21% of revenue, down 30 basis points year-over-year, driven by operating leverage. Adjusted operating margin for the quarter was 19.3%, down 10 basis points year-over-year due to investments supporting future ramp-ups. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 20.4%, down 170 basis points year-over-year, primarily driven by higher profitability in lower tax jurisdictions. Our adjusted EPS for the quarter was $0.62, up 28.5% year-over-year on a reported basis.
Turning to year-to-date results, revenue for the first nine months was $1.8 billion, up 16.5% year-over-year on a reported basis and 15.5% on an organic constant currency basis. All segments delivered double-digit growth. Data and AI-led services grew 31.7% year-over-year on a constant currency basis and accounted for 62% of revenue. Adjusted operating margin for the period was 19.8%, up 10 basis points year-over-year. Adjusted EPS for the first nine months was $1.79, up 23.7% year-over-year. Our balance sheet remained strong. In the quarter, we expanded our borrowing capacity to $1 billion in the form of a $400 million term loan and a $600 million revolving credit facility due August 2031.
This expanded debt capacity gives us the flexibility to extend our competitive advantage through targeted mergers and acquisitions while continuing to return capital to our shareholders under our $500 million share repurchase authorization. As of September 30th, we had $333 million in cash and short-term investments and $513 million in term loan and revolver debt, resulting in a net debt position of $180 million. During the first nine months, we generated $209 million in operating cash flow, invested $44 million in capital expenditures, and returned $205 million to shareholders through our share repurchases of approximately 6.6 million shares. Turning to our outlook for 2026, we continue to monitor the evolving macroeconomic environment.
However, our strong third-quarter performance, high visibility, and sustained growth momentum provide us with the confidence to raise our outlook for the remainder of the year. We now expect 2026 revenue to be in the range of $2.43 billion-$2.44 billion. This represents a year-over-year growth of 16%-17% on a reported basis and 15% on an organic constant currency basis. At the midpoint, the revised range is $32 million higher than our previous guidance. To capitalize on the strong market opportunity and stay ahead in AI, we will continue to invest in go-to-market and Data and AI capabilities through the remainder of the year.
Our outlook assumes foreign exchange gains of approximately $5 million, net interest expense of approximately $13 million-$15 million, and our full year effective tax rate to be in the range of 21%-21.5%. We expect capital expenditures to be in the range of $58 million-$62 million. We now expect adjusted EPS of $2.34-$2.36, up from our previous guidance of $2.25-$2.29, representing 20%-21% year-over-year growth. In summary, our strong performance through the first nine months underscores our differentiated competitive position. Our durable and adaptable business model positions us well to sustain this momentum through the remainder of the year and sets us up well for 2027. With that, Rohit and I would be happy to take your questions.
Operator: Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the raise hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen. When it is your turn, you will receive a message on your screen from the host allowing you to talk, and then you will hear your name called. Please accept, unmute your audio, and ask your question. As a reminder, we are allowing analysts one question and one related follow-up today. We will wait one moment to allow the queue to form. Your first question comes from Bryan Bergin with TD Cowen. Please unmute your audio and ask your question.
Bryan Bergin: Hi. Good morning. Thank you. My first question is related to strong growth sustainability. Can you compare and contrast where you stand this year versus perhaps last year at this time as it relates to things like bookings, performance, and pipeline. I think you mentioned double-digit pipe growth. I am curious about growth inflection this year. It has obviously been solid and trying to think about the sustainability of strength versus any giveback as you move ahead. Aside from obvious harder comps at your lap, are there any important fundamental differences that are worth noting. My second question is going to be on international markets.
This has been an area of investment that has shown already some good fruit and growth accelerating over the last couple of quarters. Do you expect that this will become or can become a growth leader as you continue to go through Q4 and into next year?
Rohit Kapoor: Sure, Bryan. In terms of our business momentum, I think that continues to be quite strong. I think, for us, if you were to compare it versus last year, last year, we had strong growth, we had strong build-up of pipeline. But really what's carried the day for us in 2026 is the acceleration of growth in our Data and AI-led part of the business. Today, what we see is that we are adding new pipeline, which is growing at a faster pace. The decision-making cycle time for clients, that seems to be coming down. That's actually improving the velocity of deals.
We feel very good in terms of where we stand today, and in terms of the sustainability pathway for us going forward into the future. On International Growth Markets, that is a huge untapped opportunity for us. As you rightly pointed out, we deliberately started to make investments in our International Growth Markets, and we want to be able to build and grow our presence out there. I think many of our client relationships out there and prospective clients can benefit from the same kind of value and services that we provide to our U.S.-based customers. So, there is a huge opportunity set out there.
For us, that business is still very small, and it'll continue to grow and continue to be a big growth driver for our overall company growth. The one thing which we do need to think about, and we're trying to work on that on a conscious and deliberate way, is to think about whether we can do any acquisitions in the International Growth Markets. Because that is something which will give us additional talent, additional capabilities, additional access to customers, and additional geographic locations. That can be a further impetus to our growth rate.
Bryan Bergin: All right. Very good. Thank you.
Operator: Your next question comes from Puneet Jain with JPMorgan. Please unmute your audio and ask your question.
Puneet Jain: Hey, thanks for taking my question and great quarter. Let me take a step back. You've been reporting very solid upside for last two quarters. Is that a function of enterprises, your clients, beginning to embrace AI and associated services like data analytics, which is driving nice acceleration in your growth rates? Or are there any company specific drivers like the International Growth Markets that you just mentioned under Bhupender's leadership there that are driving this acceleration?
Rohit Kapoor: Sure, Puneet. Look, I think, the one thing which we are very proud of is that we are being able to demonstrate pretty broad-based growth, in terms of the company performance. Each one of our four segments have been growing. At some point or the other, one of them takes up a leadership position and powers the growth of the company. But, if you take a look at our portfolio, it's a very balanced growth rate that we're seeing, and that's something which also points to the sustainability of that growth rate. I think, for the last two quarters, if you think about Q2 of 2026 and Q3 of 2026, the outperformance has been very significant.
The big reason for that has been the outperformance in our Data and AI-led part of the portfolio, where we've seen an acceleration of growth and we've seen a lot of business momentum. That just tells us that the kind of services that we have and the kind of capabilities that we've got and the kind of investments that we've made, that seems to be resonating very nicely with our customer base, and that's what they're looking for. Our ability to deliver highly successful AI engagements, our success rate, as we've disclosed previously, stands well above 90%. That is a big driver to the growth rate of our Data and AI-led part of our business.
That part is also short cycle. Frankly, decision-making is fairly quick out there, and that's why we've seen the outperformance take this.
Puneet Jain: Got it. And now like it's been almost a quarter since you acquired iMerit. Since like its software dates start, you mentioned I think $15 million revenue over two months. How does that acquisition help you with enterprise clients and building pathways with frontier labs, specifically with everyone's focus on model alignment?
Rohit Kapoor: Yeah. So, look, for us, iMerit is an extremely strategic acquisition, but it is likely to play out over a longer period of time. So far, we've only seen two months of integration. The integration has gone off really well, but it's still too early to call this a success. The big reason why we did the iMerit acquisition is because it allows us to play with our enterprise clients in the full AI stack.
So we now have capabilities on data, we have capabilities on building the agentic harness, we have a strong understanding of the workflow and the operations, we have now the ability to work on the model layer, and particularly when it comes to deploying agentic AI at scale, it allows us to be able to embed deep contextual knowledge into the agentic systems. It allows us to be able to train and test these agentic systems and be able to have agentic assurance. So frankly, our ability to have the full AI stack, that's a very powerful reason for us to have combined with iMerit. We are in the very, very early days of taking this out to market.
Obviously, we are doing a lot of this work with the frontier AI labs, and there's a lot of value that we add there, and there's a lot of learning that's happening out there. There's a lot of capability development that's happening jointly between the teams at EXL and iMerit that we are pulling together. So we'll see how this plays out, but the strategic rationale seems to be resonating in the marketplace, and it seems to be fitting in with some of the trends that we are seeing. Hopefully, this will be something that will allow us to differentiate ourselves even more.
Puneet Jain: Great. Thank you.
Operator: The next question will come from Maggie Nolan with William Blair. Please unmute your audio and ask your question.
Maggie Nolan: Hi. Thank you. Your intentional move of clients from traditional operations into Data and AI-led offerings, that is obviously been very successful in terms of adding volume and driving overall growth. Can you give us a little commentary on how it impacts the margin profile of those engagements at various stages of the transition?
Rohit Kapoor: Sure, Maggie. Yes, you are right. This is a very deliberate and a proactive move and a little bit counterintuitive because our belief is the more AI and data we can embed into the operations and the higher productivity and efficiency gains we can provide to our clients, the more valuable that relationship becomes, and our clients will trust us with even more business, to be able to help them modernize and to be able to embed AI in. That thesis seems to be playing out really nicely.
The margin story on this is a little bit unclear at the current moment because the change in the commercial construct with our clients, that is really not shifting as rapidly as the embedding of AI and data into the operations. Our clients still prefer us to kind of stay with existing commercial constructs, and we are working with them to try and take more ownership and more responsibility for providing them with the business value and the business outcome. I think over the next couple of years, this will transition out gradually and slowly. Our hope is that this will be net positive for our clients, and it will be net positive for us.
Our clients will be able to get a lower cost of service delivery. They will be able to get an ability to have a glide path that continues to provide them with efficiency and productivity benefits. At the same time, for EXL, we will be able to optimize our input resources, and we will be able to earn a higher margin on this. But at this point of time, that position is a bit unclear and unsettled because we are not seeing the change in the commercial construct with our clients take place that rapidly.
Maggie Nolan: Thank you. On the Payment Integrity space, how sustainable is growth at these levels, for how long. When you think about Health & Life Sciences opportunities outside of that offering, what do you view might be the growth driver, in future years or the opportunity areas in future years?
Rohit Kapoor: Sure. Payment Integrity for us has been a great business, and we are really proud of having a leadership position in Payment Integrity. The reason why we are able to provide differentiated value to our clients in this space is because our ability to combine AI, data, operational, and contextual knowledge of healthcare and bring all of this together, and that has been the driver of the growth and the business value in this service line. As we go forward, there is a greater use of AI in Payment Integrity, and in Payment Integrity, we get compensated on an outcome basis entirely.
Therefore, our ability to control the entire stack, which is the data, the AI, the model, the workflow, the recovery, that allows us to be able to add incremental value to our clients, and it allows us to continue to differentiate ourselves. Going forward, our guess is that as AI becomes more and more prevalent in payment integrity, this is an area that can continue to build and grow because we are seeing the work actually shift from a post-payment to a pre-payment side. What that means is instead of us looking at a certain percentage of the claims that a healthcare payer might be making, we're taking a look at 100% of the claims that go through the system.
Therefore, the surface area that we are touching becomes much bigger. The second thing is, as you know, with AI, fraud is rising very, very rapidly because there are new ways in which the fraudsters are looking at pushing through claims and making fraudulent claims. So that becomes another big area for us to be able to work on. Finally, we are also seeing that we are able to extend payment integrity from healthcare to insurance. Really, in insurance, if you think about all the claims that are paid and the kind of fraud that might happen or the waste and the abuse that happens, that's becoming a bigger and bigger proportion.
So really, the opportunity set for us in payment integrity is tremendous. We are continuing to make more and more investments in this space, and I think this is going to be a very AI-heavy and a data-heavy service line. We are fortunate that we are in this position where we own the complete stack, and we've got great customer relationships and a great foundation to continue to build off that.
Maggie Nolan: Thank you. Nice work.
Rohit Kapoor: Thank you.
Operator: Your next question will come from David Koning with Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated. Please go ahead with your question.
David Koning: Yeah. Hey, guys. Thanks, and great job. I just wanted to ask on margins, because I know you're thinking roughly flat margins for the year. This quarter was really interesting. We looked at the Q, and employee costs got significant leverage. I think if we just look at those, it's like 150 basis points or more of year-over-year leverage, but then offset by a pretty big increase in pass-through costs and just infrastructure investments, all good stuff. But as we look forward, you start to leverage the pass-through costs, the infrastructure, the iMerit. It just seems like there's a lot of room going forward based on at least the employee cost leverage we saw.
Maurizio Nicolelli: Sure, Dave, and thanks for the question. Look, we have guided margins to be fairly flat on a year-over-year basis. You're correct, we are making investments in many different areas, including employee costs. Now, employee costs, as you've stated, have come down a little bit when you compare that to overall revenue growth. But when you look at it just overall, we're going to continue to invest in employee costs, but also we're going to have to spend money in other areas, including infrastructure and also technology costs, as we do more and more in Data and AI. So the overall expense mix is going to change a little bit over time, and you're starting to reflect that.
But we're in growth mode right now, so you're going to see fairly stabilized, stable margins overall going forward, and you're going to see a little bit of that mix change.
Rohit Kapoor: Yeah.
Maurizio Nicolelli: Yeah.
Rohit Kapoor: Dave, I'd just add that you're absolutely right in terms of the non-linearity of our business model. Clearly, our revenue is growing faster than our employee headcount growth, and also in terms of employee cost as a percentage of revenue, that's coming down. But the investments that we are making in technology, in AI, in infrastructure, that is likely to continue to go up, and it'll provide us with a greater amount of leverage. Again, finally, it all depends in terms of the commercial contracts that we end up signing with our clients, particularly on our Total Operations part of the business, because that's something which will be a key driver of the margins.
David Koning: Yeah. No, that's great. That's great to hear. On iMerit specifically, the $15 million, that's over two months, so $7.5 million a month, good going forward. How much of the 8% sequential employee growth was from iMerit, and how much was just organic?
Maurizio Nicolelli: Our overall organic headcount growth was 11% overall on a year-over-year basis. Obviously, we still have about a 600 basis point difference between revenue growth and just our overall organic. The rest of the headcount growth was from the iMerit acquisition during the quarter.
David Koning: Yeah. The $7.5 million per month, the $15 million of two months revenue, is that pretty consistent going forward?
Maurizio Nicolelli: That's the start for the first two months. iMerit revenue is going to fluctuate a little bit based on demand on a month-to-month basis. They've had a very solid first couple of months, and it's in good shape for going forward. It's going to be a little bit lumpy here and there on a monthly basis.
David Koning: Yeah. Thanks, guys. Great job.
Rohit Kapoor: Thank you.
Operator: As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the raise hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen. Your next question comes from Vincent Colicchio with Barrington Research. Please unmute your audio and ask your question.
Vincent Colicchio: Yeah. Rohit, as the cost of running AI models declines, how much of those efficiency gains can you capture through improved margins versus passing them on to clients?
Rohit Kapoor: Right. Vincent, I think we're going to see the cost of AI continue to decline. The per token cost is also declining. But we are also going to see other costs actually increase because some of the costs associated with the guardrails that are there, the agentic harness that needs to be maintained, agentic AI assurance that needs to be done to make sure that these agents are acting as they're supposed to be acting. Some of those costs are going to be increased costs. So frankly, we will probably see a period of volatility in terms of the cost base.
And look, our entire effort is to be able to drive incremental business value to our clients and to be able to make a fair return on that value that we deliver to our clients. At this point of time, we are focused on trying to maintain our margins, make investments, deliver the value, and have as high a growth rate as we possibly can. And that's the business model that we are trying to strive towards. And we'll see how that plays out.
Operator: Vincent, if you have a follow-up, you may unmute and ask your question now.
Vincent Colicchio: Yeah. As a follow-up, what explains the year-over-year gross margin decline in the Banking, Capital Markets, and Diversified Industries, and should we expect that pressure to persist?
Maurizio Nicolelli: When you look at the Banking, Capital Markets, and Diversified Industries, especially in Q3, we have been making a lot of investment in terms of future hiring for business that is coming on board. You did see that decline by about 80 basis points from Q2 to Q3 overall. But you are seeing a bit of investment that we are making, particularly in our analytics AI services area, to really ramp up a number of engagements in the banking and diversified industry area.
Vincent Colicchio: Thank you, gentlemen.
Operator: Your next question will come from David Grossman with Stifel. Please unmute your audio and ask your question.
David Grossman: Great. Thank you. I think this question came up perhaps in a slightly different context earlier, but it is really getting at visibility next year. Anything you can share about the cadence of bookings over the course of 2026, and obviously the visibility on 2027 at this point of the year versus where you would be at this point in the year in prior years? Particularly that question, I ask it given that some of the recent momentum in the business and outperformance is coming from shorter cycle type revenue.
Rohit Kapoor: Sure, David. Look, I think for us, certainly the number of client conversations that we are seeing, and those are actually very healthy. We are also seeing larger deals in terms of those conversations because the conversation with a client is about an integrated deal that involves Total Operations, but it also involves us leveraging Data and AI. The pipeline is healthy, and like we said, the pipeline creation is growing double digits, pretty much consistent with the revenue growth rate that we have. The visibility into next year is as strong as it was last year. For us, as you know, 75% of our business is pretty much on a recurring or an annuity basis.
So actually it's a very strong foundational revenue base that we have. If you take a look at some of the new accounts that we've signed up, we are actually very pleased with the quality of those new accounts that we are signing up. Our ability to have tremendous amount of success with AI engagements, which we monitor and track, that leads us to believe that this is something that can continue as we go forward. I think there are also a lot of uncertainties as we go forward. Certainly the short cycle business will have some of its ebbs and flows.
I think for us it's really about how do we manage the aggregate portfolio in a manner that allows us to be able to create the right kind of capabilities that our clients will value.
David Grossman: Right. Excuse me. I was just looking at some of the verticals as well, and the healthcare vertical on an organic basis decelerated a little bit, and I know there could be lumpiness in that business just based on the revenue model. Anything you want to call out in the healthcare vertical? I think you said it grew 17% organically. I think it had been growing in the low 20s.
Rohit Kapoor: Sure. No, I don't think there's anything significant to read out there. There will be time periods, like I said, where on a quarter basis some of the growth rates of the verticals might come down. You would have seen that the insurance business has suddenly accelerated and frankly is growing now at a pace which we haven't seen for the past three years. The Healthcare business, you're right, it did come off a little bit in the third quarter. But when we take a look at it from a client activity perspective, there's nothing unusual that we are sensing out there. It all seems to be pretty much the same.
There's a big uptick, obviously, in our IGM business and even in our BCM and diversified industries business. So there's nothing to read that we feel that would be a trend out here. It's just as and when we are signing up these client deals and the revenue's being recognized.
David Grossman: Okay. Very good. Thank you.
Operator: We have no further questions at this time. This concludes our call. Thank you and have a good day.
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