Purves Redmond Limited has welcomed Michael Nituda (pictured) as practice leader in transportation and complex risks, effective July 20, 2026.
Nituda brings more than 18 years of experience advising middle-market organizations across Canada, having held progressive leadership and production roles with national insurance brokerages throughout his career. He has built a reputation for developing risk management strategies and delivering insurance solutions to organizations operating in highly specialized industries, with expertise spanning transportation and logistics, warehousing and distribution, manufacturing, technology, financial institutions, contractors and construction, executive liability, cyber risk and specialty insurance solutions.
Beyond his client work, Nituda is an active contributor to the insurance industry through speaking engagements and as a co-contributor to Fundamentals of Canadian Trucking Law, A Practitioners Guidebook, where he shares insights into insurance and risk management considerations affecting the Canadian trucking industry.
Avi Goldberg, head of transportation and logistics at Purves Redmond, said Nituda was a strong addition to the practice given the combination of technical depth and client relationships he brings from nearly two decades in the sector.
"His technical expertise, collaborative style, and commitment to delivering practical solutions will further strengthen our ability to support transportation and logistics clients across Canada," Goldberg said.
Nituda said PRL's reputation and commitment to excellence aligned closely with his own values.
"I couldn't be happier to join an organization that is deeply committed to delivering exceptional client service while investing in its people and preserving the independence that has made it one of Canada's most respected brokerages," he said.
Nituda's appointment lands at a firm with long-standing roots in the sector he now leads.
Purves Redmond was founded in Toronto in 1959 and remains an independently, employee-owned brokerage with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Sudbury. Transportation and waste management made up the firm's biggest client portfolios in its early years, before the business expanded into mining, technology, financial institutions and other specialized sectors it now serves.
Nituda's mandate lands at a genuinely difficult moment for Canadian transportation clients. A fresh wave of US tariffs introduced in early 2026 has disrupted trade flows on the Canada-US corridor, with cross-border truck freight volumes declining an estimated 8% to 12% in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to industry data cited by TruckerPro.
Separately, industry reporting has described a February 2026 crackdown by Canadian regulators on carrier employment models that let some companies operate at artificially low cost by misclassifying drivers; the specific enforcing authority was not identified in that reporting.
The crackdown reportedly forced some carriers to restructure or shut down, quietly reducing the number of trucks available on cross-border lanes even as demand and rates on those routes remained resilient.
That volatility compounds a pricing environment that was already unusual for the sector.
According to Aligned Insurance's 2026 Canadian Commercial Insurance Market Outlook, broader commercial property and casualty rates are trending downward or holding steady heading into 2026, while commercial auto and fleet insurance remains a notable holdout, continuing to run against that softening trend.
For transportation clients, that means navigating tariff-driven volume swings and tighter carrier capacity at the same time as an insurance line that isn't following the rest of the market down, a combination that raises the value of a dedicated practice leader who can help clients sort tariff-driven cost pressure from the separate, harder-to-shift cost of commercial auto coverage itself.
In his new role, Nituda will focus on growing PRL's transportation practice while supporting clients with transportation and commercial risks through strategic advice and tailored risk management solutions.
