The insurance company paid me for the damages to my car and then I sued the person that did the damage. Is the insurance comany entitled to the money I was awarded in court, even though they did not participate in the court proceedings? In fact, I gave the insurance company information on the case and they did nothing to reclaim the money on their own.
Technically, if you recover from the other driver you must repay the insurance company up to the amount they paid. If you collect more it belongs to you.
However, if the insurance company had a chance to go after the other driver and didn’t then you’d have a good argument for keeping the money.