Operating Framework · Program Economics
For: dealer principals, GMs, F&I directorsApplies to: any dealership model
The PVR number everyone quotes is the least useful number in the room.
Per-vehicle retail (PVR) gets repeated in every F&I meeting because it's the easiest number to say out loud. It's also the number that hides the most. Two stores can post an identical PVR and be running two entirely different businesses once cost, cancellations, claims exposure, and support are counted.
This isn't a study — DPL hasn't fielded a program-economics dataset yet (see the note below). It's a framework: the six things that need to sit on one page, for one product line, before anyone — your controller, your agency, or AMD — is qualified to tell you whether a program is actually working.
Put these six on one page before comparing anything
- Product mix and unit costWhich products are actually selling, and what each one costs the dealership — not the sheet price, the net cost after every rebate or tier.
- Cancellation and reserve behaviorWhat share of contracts cancel, at what point in the term, and how that reserve or chargeback flows back through the recap.
- Claims exposure and payout speedHow often claims get denied or delayed, and whether that shows up as a customer-experience cost even when it's not a dealership line item.
- Participation and reinsurance termsWhat the dealership actually keeps versus what the administrator or reinsurer keeps — spelled out, not summarized.
- Support and training costWhat it costs — in staff time, not just dollars — to keep the program running at the level the numbers assume.
- One consistent review periodA quarter compared to a quarter, closed-out contracts compared to closed-out contracts. A mid-cycle number next to a year-end number will lie to you by default.
This framework doesn't tell you which program or provider is "best." It tells you what to have on the table before anyone makes that claim to you — including AMD.
How to run this yourself
Pull last quarter's numbers for one product line — not the whole portfolio, one line. Separate what's verified (from the administrator statement or accounting close) from what's estimated. Put the six categories above next to each other for that one line and that one quarter. Most of what looks like a program problem turns out to be a review-period mismatch or a mix shift nobody flagged; the rest is real and worth a second look.
Take this to a meeting
Could you and your controller put all six numbers on one page for a single product line, this quarter? If the honest answer is no, that gap — not the PVR number — is the actual finding.
If assembling this picture surfaces a real gap in product fit or agency support, AMD can walk through it as a disclosed, optional next step — the framework above works whether or not that conversation ever happens.
