The second important source of funding deposit insurance systems is income from investments. This income will obviously depend upon the size of the funds and the yield on relatively risk free investments. As such, older systems have an advantage inasmuch as they have accumulated a sizable level of corpus over a period of time.
The fact that so many prominent English-speaking former colonies are counted among the rich of the advanced world today is perhaps not entirely a coincidence (Grier 1997; Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson 2001 and 2005).4 In my own field of central banking, we have a good deal in common.