Cover Whale Insurance Solutions has launched Breakwater Markets, a digital wholesale brokerage focused on commercial transportation risks, and appointed Roman Atkielski as executive vice president, Brokerage to lead it.
The new entity is designed to capture business that falls outside Cover Whale's core underwriting programs, giving the company's retail agent network a channel to place non-standard and surplus lines transportation risks without leaving the platform.
Atkielski joins from Jencap Insurance Services, one of the largest wholesale intermediaries in the United States, where he most recently served as senior vice president and national practice leader for Transportation, overseeing the firm's wholesale transportation brokerage division nationwide. He previously co-founded High Point Underwriters, a program administrator focused on independent contractor truckers, which was subsequently acquired by K2 Insurance Services.
Kevin Abramson, president of Cover Whale, said: "For a long time we've had to send a lot of good business elsewhere simply because it didn't fit our programs. Breakwater gives us a way to keep working with those agents and support a broader range of risks. It is a natural extension of what we've already built, and an important step in making the platform more complete."
Cover Whale was founded in 2019 and operates as a technology-enabled MGA focused on commercial truckers and small fleets, combining underwriting with a proprietary driver safety program that uses telematics and real-time coaching to manage risk.
The company has partnered with nearly 5,000 agents and written more than $1.3 billion in gross premium since inception, booking $133 million in gross written premiums in the first half of 2025 and targeting $277 million for the full year. Its existing platform processes close to $7 billion in annual premium submissions, with only a portion ultimately bound — the gap Breakwater is built to address.
The launch comes against a challenging backdrop for commercial transportation insurance. According to RPS's 2025 Transportation Market Outlook, the cost to insure physical damage increased 18% in 2025 over 2024, while umbrella liability rose 12%, with auto liability increases ranging between 7.5% and 20% driven by settlement creep and rising litigation costs. New York, California, Texas and Illinois continue to see limited active market participants, while the casualty marketplace in New Jersey has been described as essentially non-existent due to high-frequency claims and increased minimum limit requirements.
The litigation environment has deteriorated structurally rather than cyclically. A forensic analysis of federal and trucking industry litigation data published by the American Transportation Research Institute in late 2025 found that truck-tractor tort case filings grew at an average annual rate of 3.7% between 2014 and 2023, with the median nuclear verdict reaching $36 million, 50% higher than the 2013 median, and the share of verdicts exceeding $50 million jumping 6.4% over that span.
A key accelerant has been the growth of third-party litigation funding, in which private investors finance lawsuits in exchange for a share of any award. ATRI's 2025 report flagged this as a developing legal threat, noting that litigation funding removes financial pressure on plaintiffs to settle early and pushes investors to maximize payouts. The United States is the world's largest third-party litigation funding market, with American litigation funders accounting for a 52% share of the global industry.
That litigation pressure has pushed admitted carriers to tighten appetite sharply, particularly for non-standard risks, owner-operators and smaller fleets — the segment where wholesale channels and E&S capacity have grown their role.
Research published by Insurance Business America found that 33% of retail brokers now place at least half of their business through wholesale channels, up from 23% in 2024, with brokers citing access to markets and coverage they cannot place directly as the primary driver for using wholesale partners. For transportation risks, that reliance has intensified as admitted appetite has narrowed.
Breakwater Markets will operate as an independent entity alongside Cover Whale's core programs, leveraging its underlying technology platform and market relationships while handling placements the MGA's underwriting appetite cannot accommodate. The structure allows Cover Whale to retain agent relationships across a wider risk spectrum without expanding its underwriting exposure.
Atkielski said: "Cover Whale has built a strong platform in a tough part of the market. Breakwater is an opportunity to build on that, giving agents a straightforward way to place attractive business that doesn't necessarily fall within the core programs, while keeping the same focus on service and execution."
