New Delhi, Feb. 6 -- Partnership-led credit has moved from being a side channel to a core distribution strategy for lenders, and AI is increasingly being used to run the pipes behind it. That was the thrust of the opening episode of The Credit Continuum, a new podcast series from Yubi">Yubi, where Vipul Mahajan spoke with Manish Gupta of L&T Finance about what lenders are getting right, and what they still risk getting wrong, as credit becomes more embedded and more automated.

Gupta offered a simple marker of how far partnership lending has already travelled: at L&T Finance, he said 70-80% of lending now happens through partnerships. It is a shift that mirrors what happened earlier in payments and onboarding, where customer journeys move...