LONDON, May 14, 2026, 12:10 BST
- RELX stock picked up 2.25% to 2,385.50 pence in Cboe Europe’s estimate, bouncing back after Wednesday’s 4.97% drop.
- At its investor seminar on May 13, the company zeroed in on Risk Business Services, fraud and identity solutions, plus AI governance.
- Anthropic has rolled out more legal tools for Claude, adding pressure to professional data players like RELX rivals Thomson Reuters and Wolters Kluwer.
Shares of RELX PLC bounced Thursday, with investors reacting to the company’s latest push: management touting the Risk division’s edge from its own data, AI, and automated decision tools—key weapons, they argue, for staying competitive in fraud, identity, and compliance.
The stock, listed in London, climbed 2.25% to 2,385.50 pence as of 12:10 BST, according to a Cboe Europe estimate. That recouped a fraction of Wednesday’s 4.97% slide, when shares closed at 2,333 pence. Still, shares remain down 20.79% for the year, per MarketScreener data.
Timing is in play here. On Tuesday, Anthropic rolled out 12 new legal practice plug-ins for Claude, connecting the AI to third-party platforms like Thomson Reuters’ Westlaw and CoCounsel. The move brings renewed attention to a question dogging the industry: can general-purpose AI start drawing work away from the paid legal databases and workflow tools that dominate the market?
The worry isn’t exactly fresh, but it’s getting more acute. Back in February, Reuters flagged that Anthropic’s initial Claude Cowork plug-ins sparked a sharp selloff in data and legal analytics names—RELX dropped 14%, Wolters Kluwer slid around 13%, and at one stage, Thomson Reuters was off almost 18%.
This week, RELX’s response didn’t come from Legal—it was the Risk Business Services unit stepping up. In a presentation dated May 13, the company laid out that Risk accounted for 36% of 2025 revenue and 39% of adjusted operating profit. The numbers: £3.5 billion brought in, with £1.3 billion in adjusted operating profit.
Business Services accounts for almost 45% of revenue in the Risk division, chief executive Rick Trainor pointed out to investors. The segment, he said, is the biggest within LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ Risk unit, with a customer base topping 18,000 across more than 180 countries and territories. Trainor described the “long-term fundamentals” of the Risk segment as strong. MarketScreener
The company provides tools that let banks, retailers, telecoms and others assess whether a person, device or transaction is trustworthy. According to RELX, its Business Services products are built on data from more than 25 contributory and proprietary databases, tens of billions of public records, and over 1,000 proprietary models. More than 90% of Risk transactions are handled machine-to-machine—automated scores or signals feed straight into customer workflows.
Fraud and identity make up just over a third of Business Services revenue, according to Trainor. Financial crime and compliance—including anti-money laundering and Know Your Customer checks—represent slightly less than a third.
RELX laid out some hefty numbers in its presentation, arguing its scale is tough to duplicate. The Risk Intelligence Network, for instance, handles over 1 trillion sanctions screenings every year, along with 145 billion digital transactions, 81 billion logins, 28 billion payment transactions, and 2 billion new account creations. Sanctions screening refers to checking individuals or organizations against government restriction lists.
Vijay Raghavan, the chief technology officer for Risk and also chair of the RELX Technology Forum, said the division is rolling both generative AI and “agentic AI” into its wider tech stack. Unlike standard AI that just spits out answers, agentic AI can plan ahead and execute sequences of tasks. RELX, Raghavan said, has built what he calls a “trusted AI infrastructure” around these capabilities, aiming to keep everything transparent and defensible. MarketScreener
At the heart of RELX’s argument: these aren’t mere chatbots, but regulated, explainable decision systems baked into client workflows. Chief Financial Officer Nick Luff put it this way to Reuters back in February—RELX uses its own algorithms to deliver “right judgments” and “right inferences” for professionals handling big-ticket decisions. Reuters
The case still lingers in the market’s mind. Deutsche Bank analyst Steve Liechti stuck with his Buy rating on RELX on Thursday, holding firm on a 3,050 pence price target, according to MarketScreener, which cited dpa-AFX Analyser.
RELX stuck to its full-year forecast in an April 23 trading update, pointing to solid underlying gains in both revenue and adjusted operating profit, with constant-currency adjusted earnings per share also set to climb. The underlying growth metric leaves out swings from currency, acquisitions, disposals, and certain timing effects, aiming to show core performance.
But there’s risk in both directions. In that same update, RELX flagged potential hazards: shifts in personal data regulation, changes in intellectual property law, cybersecurity incidents, competition, and fluctuating demand. Any of these could skew actual outcomes away from expectations. And if legal and compliance clients start relying on lower-cost AI for more tasks, RELX’s vaunted data moat might not mean as much as executives claim.
