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by Commander Tansin A. Darcos 10/19/2014, 7:20pm PDT |
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If you use your own insurance company to collect on your insurance, it's considered a claim on your policy, which means your rates can go up, even if it costs your insurer nothing because they collect from someone else. So in the case of auto insurance people generally do not use subrogation.
In the case of business insurance, subrogation is very common. Because in many cases your company might have six, seven, eight different policies, possibly from three or four insurers, covering different types of perils. Fire Insurance, Earthquake, Flood, Auto (which has at least three different types of coverage), general liability, glass, casualty, boiler, and now terrorist attack (most insurers specifically excluded terrorist incidents for all policies written starting on September 12, 2001.) So you'd contact your insurance broker with whom you do the most business, who probably files the claim with whoever you are paying the most to or whose policy is closest to your loss, especially if they're not sure which it is covered by. Presumably the broker knows what policies you have and if your loss involves multiple policies (an earthquake causes a fire, which sets off the sprinklers causing water damage, or did the fire happen before the earthquake, or did the earthquake break the water pipe, causing the flooding and the fire which was put out by the water?)
I've been in ten auto accidents in the thirty-five years I've been licensed to drive, four where I either didn't have insurance and paid the damages out of my own pocket, or just paid it so my insurance didn't raise my rates, two where I was at fault, and the rest where someone else was. In no case where I was the victim of an accident did I ever file a claim with my own insurance company. (I do notify my insurer in case I have to use my uninsured motorist coverage.) And I had one incident where the person I ran into informed me that they could file it with their insurance, but it would count on their record and their rates would go up.
In any event, even if they were stupid enough to use subrogation and risk having their rates increased, the insurance company which insured the guy who hit you still has to pay (in this case, your insurer) what the vehicle is worth or reasonable replacement value, not merely depreciated value, so there is no reason for your insurance company to be reducing your claim in the first place on a subrogation case. |
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