• Response—With the advent of technology, it is now possible to balance priorities while leveraging innovative new solutions to handle subrogation response. This benefits the adjuster by freeing up time to address the most important priorities, as well as the organization, which can get an immediate lift from technological innovation.

The results of such actions will speak for themselves—with an improvement in indemnity, decreased cycle time and a reduction in intercompany arbitration.

Companies such as Chicago-based HyperQuest provide a seamless and transparent workflow using patented technology, thereby enabling adjusters to hand off subrogation demands from claimant carriers. In a traditional setting, these demands often find their way to the bottom of an incoming stack of mail. The estimates may be rubber-stamped for payment or inadvertently forgotten, resulting in an increase in adverse intercompany-arbitration filings. In the best-case scenarios, the subrogation demands may be submitted to an appraisal group for review using their estimating platform to be scrubbed for company compliance and industry standards. The downside is that this formalized process will increase costs while limiting productivity with a limited impact on leakage.

By identifying workflow opportunities, insurers have the ability to fundamentally transform the existing subrogation-response process. By leveraging technology, insurers can free up existing staff to focus on more critical tasks, such as contacts, inspections and claims disposition. Most critically, changing the paradigm on subrogation response from reactive to proactive will have a profound impact on severity and expense improvement.