Subrogation and How It Affects Policyholders

Subrogation is an idea that's well-known among insurance and legal companies but often not by the people who hire them. If this term has come up when dealing with your insurance agent or a legal proceeding, it is to your advantage to comprehend the steps of the process. The more you know about it, the better decisions you can make about your insurance policy.

Every insurance policy you own is a promise that, if something bad occurs, the insurer of the policy will make good without unreasonable delay. If you get hurt while you're on the clock, your employer's workers compensation insurance pays out for medical services. Employment lawyers handle the details; you just get fixed up.

But since ascertaining who is financially responsible for services or repairs is usually a confusing affair – and delay sometimes compounds the damage to the policyholder – insurance firms usually opt to pay up front and figure out the blame after the fact. They then need a path to recoup the costs if, when all is said and done, they weren't actually responsible for the payout.

Can You Give an Example?

Your electric outlet catches fire and causes $10,000 in home damages. Happily, you have property insurance and it pays for the repairs. However, in its investigation it finds out that an electrician had installed some faulty wiring, and there is reason to believe that a judge would find him to blame for the loss. You already have your money, but your insurance firm is out ten grand. What does the firm do next?

How Subrogation Works

This is where subrogation comes in. It is the process that an insurance company uses to claim payment when it pays out a claim that turned out not to be its responsibility. Some companies have in-house property damage lawyers and personal injury attorneys, or a department dedicated to subrogation; others contract with a law firm. Ordinarily, only you can sue for damages done to your self or property. But under subrogation law, your insurance company is given some of your rights in exchange for having taken care of the damages. It can go after the money originally due to you, because it has covered the amount already.

How Does This Affect the Insured?

For starters, if you have a deductible, it wasn't just your insurance company who had to pay. In a $10,000 accident with a $1,000 deductible, you lost some money too – to be precise, $1,000. If your insurer is unconcerned with pursuing subrogation even when it is entitled, it might choose to recoup its expenses by ballooning your premiums. On the other hand, if it knows which cases it is owed and goes after those cases enthusiastically, it is acting both in its own interests and in yours. If all ten grand is recovered, you will get your full deductible back. If it recovers half (for instance, in a case where you are found 50 percent accountable), you'll typically get half your deductible back, based on the laws in most states.

Moreover, if the total expense of an accident is over your maximum coverage amount, you may have had to pay the difference, which can be extremely expensive. If your insurance company or its property damage lawyers, such as criminal attorney Portland, OR, pursue subrogation and wins, it will recover your expenses as well as its own.

All insurance companies are not created equal. When comparing, it's worth measuring the records of competing firms to evaluate whether they pursue valid subrogation claims; if they resolve those claims with some expediency; if they keep their customers informed as the case goes on; and if they then process successfully won reimbursements quickly so that you can get your deductible back and move on with your life. If, on the other hand, an insurer has a reputation of honoring claims that aren't its responsibility and then covering its profit margin by raising your premiums, you should keep looking.