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Card class: Cross-Channel • Category: Shipping & Courier
Claim value as a fraction of DPDLocal-fulfilled revenue. >2% = the carrier is materially eroding margin; carrier-renegotiation trigger.

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At a glance

Sum of all DPDLocal claims (open and settled) divided by total revenue from orders shipped via DPDLocal. The “is the carrier eroding my margin” metric. Above 2% is the renegotiation-or-switch trigger; below 0.5% is healthy carrier hygiene.
What it countsSUM(dpdlocal.claim.value WHERE status IN [open, settled]) / SUM(commerce_sibling.order.total WHERE order_ref IN dpdlocal.shipment). The 90-day window smooths claim-resolution lag; shorter windows are noisy because settled claims arrive in batches.
CurrencyMerchant base currency (typically GBP).
IncludesOpen claims (still being processed by DPD) and settled claims (DPD-paid amounts), not denied or withdrawn. The card is your gross exposure to carrier-fault costs.
ExcludesCustomer-side refunds, returns, store credits unrelated to carrier fault. This card is purely the DPDLocal-attributed cost.
only_when: has_commerce_siblingCard only renders when a commerce connector is also live.
Time window90D. Long enough to smooth claim-settlement timing variance.
Alert trigger>2%. Renegotiation threshold. Sustained >2% for 90 days warrants an RFP for an alternative UK carrier.
Rolesowner, finance

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your DPDLocal data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

A UK premium-electronics DTC merchant. Reading 12 Mar 26, trailing 90 days.
MetricValue
DPDLocal-fulfilled revenue (commerce sibling)£1,840,000
Total open + settled claims (90D)£29,440
Ratio1.6%
Card reads 1.6%. Under the 2% trigger; healthy for premium-electronics. Three things to notice:
  1. Premium-electronics typically runs 1.2 to 2.5%, fragile high-AOV goods generate more DAMAGED claims. 1.6% is mid-range. A fashion DTC running the same number would be cause for serious concern (target <0.5%).
  2. The 1.6% is gross, not net. Of the £29,440, perhaps £18,000 will be paid out by DPD; the rest will be denied or withdrawn. Net cost to the merchant is the gap between claims filed and claims paid plus the customer-facing refunds covered out-of-pocket.
  3. Trend matters more than the level. A merchant at 1.4% rising to 1.6% to 1.8% over three reads is heading for renegotiation; a merchant steady at 1.6% for 12 months is just operating in a damage-prone category and the level is already priced into the carrier rate.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

CardWhy pair
Open Claim ValueThe numerator (open subset).
Open ClaimsThe count.
Late-Delivery Revenue at RiskForward-looking exposure; this card is realised cost.
Avg Shipping CostThe other side of the carrier economic equation; total carrier cost = shipping + claims.
Premium-Service Uplift vs StandardHelps justify whether premium service tiers are earning their carrier-cost premium.

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look: DPDLocal’s MyDPD shows raw claim values. The commerce sibling shows revenue. Neither produces this ratio natively. The card is the join. Why your manual calc may differ:
ReasonDirectionWhy
Open vs settled inclusionEitherCard includes both. A finance-strict view (settled-only) typically reads 50 to 70% of this card’s value.
Claim-settlement timingEitherSettled claim values appear in the period DPD settles them, not the period of the underlying incident. A 90-day window mostly resolves this; shorter windows are noisy.
CurrencyEdge casesEU consignment claims may settle in EUR or as a sterling-converted amount on the invoice; the card uses the API value as-is.
Cross-connector reconciliation:
CardExpected relationship
Carrier-line on commerce P&L (variable cost)Should equal Avg Shipping Cost × order count + claim recoveries.

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

What’s a “good” claim ratio for my category? Useful benchmarks. (1) Fashion / apparel: 0.2 to 0.5%. (2) Beauty / supplements: 0.3 to 0.8%. (3) Premium electronics / fragile: 1.2 to 2.5%. (4) B2B: under 0.2%. Tune the alert threshold to your category. Should I look at the open subset only or open+settled? For carrier-renegotiation conversations, use both (this card). For finance forecasting, use settled only (filters out claims DPD will deny). The card’s design reflects the carrier-renegotiation use case. The ratio jumped 0.5% in one month. What changed? Three usual causes. (1) Single high-value claim (e.g. a £4,000 lost-laptop claim) settled in the period. (2) Settlement of a backlog batch. DPD occasionally settles a quarterly batch in one go. (3) Volume drop without claim drop, denominator shrank, ratio rose. Pair with Total Orders sibling. My account team disputes the ratio. What’s their leverage? DPD’s leverage is the per-claim valuation (declared value caps) and denial reasons (insufficient packaging, etc.). The card’s leverage is the unambiguous totals. The right framing is “settled value (DPD-paid) is X% of revenue, even excluding open and denied”. DPD struggles to argue the realised-cash number. Is this card the right input for an RFP / carrier-switch decision? One of three. The other two are Carrier OTD by Sales Channel for service-level evidence and Avg Shipping Cost for headline rate. Combine all three for a balanced commercial review. Why is the window 90D and not the 30D used elsewhere? Claim resolution is slow (14 to 45 days typical). A 30-day window mostly captures filed-but-unsettled claims with high noise on the settled side. 90 days lets settlement-timing variance smooth out.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Claim Value as % of DPDLocal Revenue is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across DPDLocal and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.