[gorthol]

For example you could implement a credit system where anyone could be a creditor and vote (with their digital signature) what requests get approved. Then, once the money changes hands, the smart contract would automatically deduce que periodic payments, including the interests, and distribute it to the lenders in the correct proportions. If a payment is missed, a penalization or increased interest could be implemented.

I don't know if this would be currently possible with Ethereum because I haven't looked very deep into its technology, but if not I'm pretty sure some blockchain will allow this kind of interactions.

For more examples, check: https://www.ethereum.org/token

[acdha]

What advantage does that really offer? You still need to deal with the expensive parts (assessing credit worthiness, dealing with fraud or malfeasance) and if you have the infrastructure to do that, how much is a rigid contract-as-code system which you don't control really adding?

Consider what happens if someone takes the loan and never repays it. If you have a government with a functioning court system you can use any commonly accepted contract form, even a signed IOU, so a blockchain adds no value even if you do convince the court it's trustworthy; if you don't have a reliable court system, they can just walk away and you've just spent a lot of money on irrelevant infrastructure. If you have a credit rating system and sufficient proof of identity there might be a consequence but in every case the real value appears to be created by other entities (government IDs and courts; private credit rating services), none of which even need to know what a blockchain is.