Vaulted gold

Vaulted gold denotes gold bullion, which is stored in professional bank vaults. By acquiring vaulted gold, institutional or private investors obtain outright ownership of physical gold.

In contrast to the traditional purchase of gold bars or gold coins, an investor who buys vaulted gold also acquires physical gold ownership, but does not hold the gold in his or her own hands. Vaulted gold comes with withdrawal or delivery options, i.e., investors can request delivery of their holdings or pick up holdings directly from the vault. Providers of vaulted gold may charge fees for withdrawal or delivery.

In practice, only a small percentage of investors request delivery or withdrawal of vaulted gold holdings.

Unlike exchange-traded funds or commodities, in the case of vaulted gold no financial instrument or security is put between the investor and the physical gold. Buyers of vaulted gold acquire direct ownership in gold. Buyers of structured products, which are based on the price of gold, acquire a claim against the issuer of the product, but no outright ownership in gold. Exchange traded funds (ETF) or exchange traded commodities (ETC) can be backed by vaulted gold. In legal terms, the position of an owner of such shares with regards to the physical gold is very different from the one of an owner of outright vaulted gold.

Bullion banks offer so-called gold accounts. Allocated gold accounts provide investors with full ownership of vaulted gold, while unallocated gold accounts provide investors only with claims against the provider, rather than any outright ownership in gold. Typically, bullion banks do not deal in quantities of less than 1000 oz (about U.S $1.7 million ) in either type of account, which means that gold accounts are mainly targeted at institutional or very wealthy private investors.

In recent years, newly emerged providers of vaulted gold have made outright ownership of professionally vaulted gold accessible to private investors.

Historically, vaulted gold was primarily offered by wealthy private banks, e.g., Swiss private banks, in the form of gold accounts. However, in recent years, new providers—including both banks and non-banks (e.g., precious metals traders)—have started to offer vaulted gold or savings plans based on vaulted gold to private investors. For example, some of the first gold accumulation plans were introduced by the precious metals trading company Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo during the 1980s.

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Wikipedia