Banks take money from depositors, lend it to borrowers and keep the difference between what they pay the depositors and what they lend at, this is the most basic model of banking, and it’s called ‘financial intermediation’.
This doesn’t mean anybody else couldn’t do something similar if they had money and wanted to lend it to another person, the whole idea of letting banks do it is ease of use, that they have risk taking ability, and some indemnity because unless huge tranches of the loans they do go bad you don’t lose your money, on a one to one basis you only need one bad loan to have 100% losses.
It is sometimes a risk worth considering. Take for instance if you have a family member who has substantial money and they want to help out a relative. Depending on the type of relationship they can’t ‘gift’ them the money, nor may they want to, but they can lend them the money.
Doing this means you have to …