When you last booked an airline flight, did you also purchase travel insurance coverage? Or when you bought electronics, were you offered an extended warranty? Those are examples of embedded insurance—the ability to purchase insurance products and services in concert with another purchase.

Embedded insurance has been around for nearly a century. In 1925, Chrysler was among the first to offer embedded insurance when it included theft insurance with a car purchase. Embedded insurance is an expanding and growing market, moving from simple point-of-purchase check-a-box sales, such as the extended warranty offered with many products, to securing auto insurance at the point of sale or renters insurance at the point of signing a lease.

Auto and renters insurance can still be easily bought and sold at the point of purchase but require more data and must offer more options. How old is the driver? What are the deductible and coverage limit options? With those more detailed transactions, the expertise of an agent is tremendously valuable because consumers have questions about their options and want to ensure they are getting the appropriate coverage for a good price.

So, how does an agent get involved in the embedded insurance customer journey? Take the same approach as prospecting for potential insureds, except do it on a broader scale. Instead of building relationships with individual consumers, with embedded insurance you are building relationships with businesses that can help you grow your book of business.

Connect with local businesses that could benefit from adding embedded insurance to their sales process. Look at car dealers, rental companies, mortgage brokers and home builders. Look at your current client base. Do any of them own a business that you could collaborate with on embedded insurance?

When working with a company to offer embedded insurance, you maintain the ability to shop for the best coverage and price for their customers. You have the expertise to explain all of that to the consumer at the time of purchase. Plus, you can build on that embedded insurance sale to take a more holistic look at the client's insurance needs.

Embedded insurance also allows consumers, including diverse populations, to benefit from insurance products they otherwise might not have been exposed to via traditional marketing or buying channels. That means new potential customers for independent agents.

Agents already excel in customer relationships and market knowledge, are well-positioned to explain the technology and services to customers, and are proven winners at selling, upselling and cross-selling. Plus, even with the growth of artificial intelligence and other technology applications, agents provide the human element that time and again proves itself in insurance transactions.

Hunter Fausnacht is president of the Agent & Broker Group at The Institutes, an organization that provides knowledge, education, resources, thought leadership and global collaboration on risk management and insurance.