-: My name's Robert Runckle,
I'm director of recovery operations in human resources
at Praxis Consulting.
Praxis is a subrogation vendor in the insurance industry
so what that means is,
in layman's terms we're a B to B collection service
within the insurance industry.
Our customer is an insurance company,
so oftentimes they payout their policy holders
for a loss that is not their fault,
somebody else is at fault, another insured party,
so we assist them in working behind the scenes to
identify loss, investigate it and negotiate settlements
to recover that money
from the adverse party's insurance carrier.
Maybe common occurrences like auto accidents
or kitchen fires,
all the way to much rarer circumstances
like a multi-party accident
that would take place on a,
for example, a construction site.
So what we do is we start out with loss runs
from our clients.
Now they may be a top 10 insurance carrier
all over the United States
to a regional or a state-wide carrier.
Now, we run that through our process
and audit their closed claim files
or their open claim files,
identify any situation where an adverse party was liable
or potentially liable, we investigate the loss,
investigate liability, damages,
the statutes in the particular state where the loss occurred
and then contact all the parties that are involved
in attempt to negotiate some sort of settlement.
We have a client who insures a landlord and
landlord has tenants in the house and a fire occurred.
It originated from the stove.
Now in that situation we're going to need to
collect all the physical evidence
for not only the appliances in question
but any surrounding appliances,
take statements from anybody that was involved,
look at the lease agreements,
also if there is any expert testing that needs to be done,
then we'll need to put all parties on notice
for the manufacturers
or possibly the installers of all of the equipment
that is in question.
There are two sides to every story,
so oftentimes we may find out
that the story that we have on our side
according to our documentation
may not be entirely accurate as,
as told by the other party but
we do our best to collect all of the factual information,
compare that to whatever the negligent statutes
of that particular state
say can be settled and paid by the adverse party
and come to a mutually agreeable decision
and if that isn't possible, arbitration and sue are options.