Disrupting Permanent Life Insurance: How AI Drives Clearer Choices with Mark Forman
Life insurance remains one of the most important financial products people buy, yet much of the industry still operates like a black box. Mark Forman, CMO of COVR, says AI is finally making it possible to compare permanent life insurance the way people already compare other financial products.
TAMPA BAY, Fla., April 16, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Life insurance industry has not been too complex to modernize. It has been too comfortable. On this episode of Disruption Interruption podcast, host Karla Jo Helms (KJ) speaks with Mark Forman, now Chief Marketing Officer at COVR following the merger of Opto, COVR, and Vibe, about why permanent life insurance remains fragmented, hard to evaluate, and lacking a real marketplace. Now, AI is beginning to change that. As Forman puts it, "The problem that we're solving is that there's no real marketplace."
Buyers Remain in The Dark
For Forman, the core failure is transparency. He argues that insurers have long benefited from a market where buyers know they need coverage, but struggle to understand what they are getting, how it works, and whether it is truly the best fit. He points to strong interest from younger buyers, even as permanent life insurance sales have stayed relatively flat for years, because the process still feels hard, opaque, and difficult to navigate.
That opacity has real consequences. "You overspend or you get a policy that you don't fully understand and maybe it lapses and you lose money," Forman says. He adds that some policyholders may not even realize they have built up cash value or left money on the table before letting a policy lapse. In his view, the damage is not abstract, it is financial, avoidable, and often invisible until it is too late.
The gap is larger than most people realize. In the episode, Forman cites a $12 trillion life insurance coverage gap in the United States and notes that 82% of wealthy investors want life insurance guidance while only 12% report receiving it. He argues that this disconnect reflects a market where demand exists, but clarity, distribution, and advice have not kept pace with how consumers now expect financial products to work.
A Marketplace for a Product That Never Had One
The answer is not to replace advisors, but to give them a toolset broad enough to evaluate far more options than any one person could process alone. "What AI has allowed us to do is to sort of take all that data together, teach this engine how to see these policies, and then to create a marketplace for the end users so they can make an informed decision," he says. For a category where one advisor may only know a handful of solutions deeply, AI opens the door to broader comparison, faster case design, and clearer tradeoffs across carriers and products.
That is also the logic behind the newly combined enterprise. Forman explains that COVR brings end-to-end application and compliance infrastructure, Vibe adds deep distribution expertise, and Opto contributes with AI-powered permanent life insurance design. Together, he says, the goal is to make policy comparison, application, and client guidance faster and more transparent. "I can be made bionic by these AI tools. I'm not being replaced by them. I'm being made better by them", Forman says.
Life insurance does not need more binders, more opacity, or more passive service. It needs a market that behaves like a modern financial market, that helps advisors work better, gives consumers more clarity, and closes the protection gap still sitting in plain sight. His closing advice reaches beyond insurance itself: "Get really acquainted with the problem. Talk to the audiences that you want to serve and find out what problems they need solved."
Links
Disrupting Life Insurance: Why "Passive Service" is a Risk to Your Wealth with Mark Forman
Disruption Interruption is the podcast where you will hear from today's biggest Industry Disruptors. Learn what motivated them to bring about innovation and how they overcame opposition to adoption.
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-forman
Company Website: http://www.covrtech.com
About Disruption Interruption™
Disruption is happening on an unprecedented scale, impacting all manner of industries— MedTech, Finance, IT, eCommerce, shipping, logistics, and more—and COVID has moved their timelines up a full decade or more. But WHO are these disruptors and when did they say, "THAT'S IT! I'VE HAD IT!"? Time to Disrupt and Interrupt with host Karla Jo "KJ" Helms, veteran communications disruptor. KJ interviews badasses who are disrupting their industries and altering economic networks that have become antiquated with an establishment resistant to progress. She delves into uncovering secrets from industry rebels and quiet revolutionaries that uncover common traits—and not-so-common—that are changing our economic markets… and lives. Visit the world's key pioneers that persist to success, despite arrows in their backs at www.disruption-interruption.com.
About Jeffrey Freedman
Mark Forman is a marketing strategist and financial services executive with more than 20 years of experience blending creativity, technology, and customer experience. He is currently Chief Marketing Officer at COVR, following the merger of Opto, COVR, and Vibe, where he helps lead the modernization of life insurance distribution through AI-powered policy design and digital infrastructure.
Over the course of his career, Forman has led digital marketing, customer experience, marketing automation, and user-interface strategy across the insurance and annuity sectors. His work began in the early internet era, when he helped build innovative financial services technology, including an early online trading platform for variable annuities. A former poetry student who calls himself an "accidental marketer," Forman brings a distinctive mix of storytelling, product strategy, and digital transformation to every role, with a focus on making complex financial products easier to understand, compare, and trust.
About Karla Jo Helms
Karla Jo Helms is the Chief Evangelist and Anti-PR® Strategist for JOTO PR Disruptors™. Karla Jo learned firsthand how unforgiving business can be when millions of dollars are on the line — and how the control of public opinion often determines whether one company is happily chosen, or another is brutally rejected. Being an alumnus of crisis management, Karla Jo has worked with litigation attorneys, private investigators, and the media to help restore companies of goodwill into the good graces of public opinion — Karla Jo operates on the ethic of getting it right the first time, not relying on second chances and doing what it takes to excel. Helms speaks globally on public relations, how the PR industry itself has lost its way, and how, in the right hands, corporations can harness the power of Anti-PR to drive markets and impact market perception.
References
- LIMRA, & Life Happens. (2024, April 15). U.S. life insurance need gap grows in 2024. limra.com/en/newsroom/news-releases/2024/u.s.-life-insurance-need-gap-grows-in-2024/
- LIMRA. (2026, March 3). Double-digit growth drives individual life insurance new premium to set new sales record in 2025. limra.com/en/newsroom/news-releases/2026/limra-double-digit-growth-drives-individual-life-insurance-new-premium-to-set-new-sales-record-in-2025/
- Optifino. (2025, September 29). Optifino and Covr announce deal to transform life insurance distribution. optifino.com/optifino-and-covr-announce-deal-to-transform-life-insurance-distribution/
Media Inquiries:
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727-777-4629
SOURCE Disruption Interruption
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