@coelohim We could go into a long discussion about the meaning of riba at the time of the prophet.
But put simply, banks, the payments mechanism, insurance, and finance are a large and important part of the economy, as attested to by their millions of customers, businesses, and governments around the world that deal with them. They constitute a large part (about a quarter plus or minus depending on the country) of the capitalization of stock market indexes. Excluding them would be a large deviation from a fully diversified passive portfolio, and greatly limit the choices of active managers. So the justification of excluding them has to be put upon those who propose to do so.
There were no banks or securities markets at the time of the prophet, no regulation of the financial sector, and no concept of financial intermediation or portfolio management. The exploitive redoubling of unpaid debt (riba) by greedy moneylenders burdening the poor at the time of the prophet is clearly not the same as modern day interest, its was like loan sharking.