Pricing beliefs: Empirical evidence from the implied cost of deposit insurance for Islamic banks

Using a large international sample of 348,899 year-firm observations covering 352 Islamic banks and 30,572 conventional banks in 213 countries over the 1999–2013 period, we estimate the deposit insurance premiums of Islamic banks and conventional banks. We find that the premiums for publicly listed Islamic banks are 28% lower than those for publicly listed conventional banks. Moreover, we show that the premiums of privately held banks are significantly higher than those of publicly listed banks. Finally, we show that publicly listed Islamic banks did not record an increase in the level of deposit insurance premiums during the 2007–2009 financial crisis.