BullionVault lets you buy gold and silver bullion online at the lowest possible price

You'll have seen the current prices for buying gold, and selling, on our front page. At the moment, in ounces, it’s about [Sell] $ – $ [Buy]. Where do our gold and silver prices come from?

They come from other BullionVault users, just like you.

BullionVault offers a marketplace exchange in accredited, pre-vaulted, privately owned, professional market bullion. You get to deal directly with another user who wants to sell when you want to buy, and vice-versa. You both save money by cutting out the middleman, both when you buy and when you sell.

It’s easy too. You'll check the price on a price chart, choose your own dealing limit price, and enter your order.

The more competitive the price you post the higher your chance of doing a deal, and if you offer to pay the price at which somebody is already offering (the ‘Buy‘ price, or ‘Best Offer‘ - here $) you'll deal straight away.

There is 24/7 competition between users to offer each other the best price. That’s why BullionVault prices are genuinely ‘competitive’.

Our website makes using an exchange very simple and safe for you, and people from all over the world have quickly got the hang of it and empowered themselves to deal gold cheaper. Open exchanges and competing quotes get you better prices. That's why we do it this way. But if you're a bit nervous just call us. We're more than happy to help you through your deal on the telephone.

BullionVault offers you exceptionally reliable and deep liquidity through four complementary channels.

1. The best price is usually offered by another BullionVault user. You deal direct with them, cutting out the middleman to your mutual advantage. This direct client-to-client dealing accounts for about 65% of trading volume on BullionVault.

   However clients aren't forced to quote great prices, so about 35% of the time our own price is better for you. That means you'll trade directly with BullionVault itself – via one of our robots.

2. 'Robots' are computer programs which receive an electronic price feed and use it to quote prices on the BullionVault Order Board in just the same way as you and other clients do. Ours manage BullionVault's own $40 million inventory. Robots are subject to the same limitations as you, which means they can only sell what they already own physically in the vault, or buy with their cleared cash balance. You buy from them, or sell to them, just like you would directly with another client, but only while they offer a better price. It's as simple as that.

   BullionVault's robots usually quote prices in larger quantities than most clients do; sufficient to deal $2m worth instantaneously when world bullion markets are open. They quote prices 24/7 and therefore offer the most dependable and instantly accessible medium-size liquidity of any bullion trading environment anywhere in the world.

   Clients with an interest in computer programming often develop robots for themselves and use them to trade like professional dealers. This brings yet more liquidity to the marketplace.

3. Sometimes, like on the day Lehman Brothers went bust, clients acquire all the immediately available stock from our robots. Although we immediately buy new stock to replace what was sold it takes 48 hours to be delivered, and because the gold is not yet in the vault the robots have no stock to sell.

   At such times you benefit enormously from the access BullionVault gives you to the liquidity of the full depth of the London market. You can enter an order to buy or sell at the price announced at the daily London Fix. The London Fix is the deepest daily pool of bullion market liquidity in the world – typically restricted just to professionals, which is why you access it through us.

   We allow you to buy or sell as much gold as you want at the daily price, and we take onto our own stock the rounded up fraction of a 400 oz bar.

   The price set daily at the London Fix dealing price is published widely all around the world.

4. Finally we offer a special service for larger clients. They can telephone deal through us directly on the London Spot Market. During the London trading day they can deal whole bars of gold (400 oz multiples) or half pallets of silver (16,000 oz multiples) at the world market price.

   You might not realise how this service for wealthy customers contributes to your liquidity; but it does.

   Suppose a wealthy client had 400 oz of gold in BullionVault already, but with heavy demand from buyers there were few offers on the Order Board. The cheapest gold on BullionVault would start to drift above the world market price, as bidders bid over the world price. But the wealthy client can execute a spot market order to buy at the world market price, and offer the gold they already own in the vault to other BullionVault users for a small but easy profit.

   That's natural market forces being used to keep liquidity flowing at fair prices – and it works on BullionVault because anyone who can make settlement to the main market, in whole bars, can use the main market as a source or sink of bullion.

We believe the best way to offer you highly reliable and fairly priced liquidity is to open channels to the largest number of market participants and back it up with access to the deepest markets. Most of our competitors provide you with a single counterparty – themselves – and this reflects in their pricing. So if reliable liquidity at fair prices is what you are looking for, then BullionVault sets the standard.

Main market trades in options 3 and 4 incur a two business day settlement delay and have a different fee structure. Please see the tariff.

BullionVault is open-ended. An inbound or outbound armoured delivery is run whenever there are several bars to collect or deliver. Usually this is about twice a week.

BullionVault itself is the main user of this open-ended structure, which lets us manage our own inventory to act as a buffer between the smaller investment sizes typical of retail investors, and the larger settlement quanta of the professional bullion market.

However any BullionVault user who wishes to make or take delivery of 1 bar of gold (400 oz) or a half pallet of silver (16,000 oz) can use the same open-ended nature of the system by settling their professional spot market trades directly into or out of the vault.

Compared to coins and small bars

Coins and small bars are normally 7% more expensive than gold on BullionVault. Dealers also tend to buy back at a discount of about 1%. BullionVault prices can be compared reliably against the published spot price. Our gold buying and selling prices are usually well within 0.2% of spot, and silver within 1%.

Although storing coins and small bars at home is free, it is not usually the wise geopolitical option. You will probably need to arrange your own insurance. For gold this is likely to be 10 times as much as BullionVault's combined storage and insurance fee of 0.12% for gold.

Compared to ETFs (Exchange-traded funds)

With ETFs, you never actually own physical gold. According to their trust deeds some ETFs are not even backed by gold; they are designed to track the gold price using complex derivatives. At BullionVault, we don't make something complex out of something simple. You own your gold.

With ETFs, you would pay a storage fee of around 0.40%, and most ETF gold is not insured, even within that fee. At BullionVault, storage and insurance costs just 0.12% per annum for gold.

The huge majority of ETF gold is stored in London and New York. The ETF manager chooses the jurisdiction – you don't. At BullionVault, we believe a choice of storage jurisdictions is important – as is the ability to switch. We let you choose. About 75% of our users choose Zurich, in Switzerland.

ETFs are traded on major stock exchanges, which tend to be open 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. They settle to your stockbroker in two or three days, who then settles with you. At BullionVault, we are open for dealing 24/7 with instantaneous settlement to your BullionVault account. A requested withdrawal to your bank account will usually be sent and arrive the following business day.

Acting through the Chief Executive the BullionVault Board directs company policy to be implemented by the management team.

The management team is:

Paul Tustain

Chief Executive

Robert Glynne

COO (Chief Operating Officer)

Guy Evans

CTO (Chief Technology Officer)

Justina Prytula

Financial Controller and Company Secretary

Adrian Ash

Head of Research

Nittin Seehakoo

Head of Customer Services

Daniel Jay

Head of Marketing

Johnny Stewart

Head of Product

Miguel Perez-Santalla

Vice President Business Development – The Americas

In total the company employs 35 people at its London office.

The World Gold Council recommends and endorses BullionVault for retail gold bullion.

On 21st April 2009, under command of HM The Queen, the Prime Minister awarded BullionVault the UK's leading business prize The Queen's Award for Enterprise Innovation.

Both BullionVault and its vault operators are full members of the London Bullion Market Association, [LBMA]. The LBMA forms the largest marketplace in the world for physical gold bullion.

BullionVault is ranked number 11 in the 2012 Sunday Times TopTrack 250 league table of Britain's leading private companies.

BullionVault operates without gearing and carries sufficient surplus shareholders funds - held as cash at call - to operate with zero revenue for five years. For full financial figures please download the latest audited financial statements.

BullionVault publishes up-to-date Bar Lists from the vault operators it uses and publishes on-line the daily reconciliation of those bar lists to the daily register of bullion owners – which includes your holding listed under your private alias.

BullionVault publishes up-to-date Client Money Bank Statements from Lloyds Bank – the company's bankers – and publishes on-line the daily reconciliation of those statements to the daily register of client money owners – which includes your holding listed under your private alias.

BullionVault's independent assayers are Alex Stewart International who annually inspect and reconcile the physical metal in the vault to the bar list, and report directly to BullionVault's auditors Albert Goodman, who publish that report on their own website.

Although we communicate with the world via the internet BullionVault is a bricks-and-mortar business which welcomes your visit. Come to our offices at Landmark House (12th Floor), Blacks Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 9DP, UK. You don't need an appointment, although it would likely save you some waiting time.

Your ownership and title would not be affected, although there would likely be a short delay before you could realise its value, while a liquidator was appointed.

A liquidator could not claim title to your bullion. That’s because you are the legal owner of all gold and silver that you buy through BullionVault. BullionVault is acting as a custodian, which is a status that's very different from your bank, and immeasurably safer for you.

With a bank account, you transfer ownership of your money to the bank when you make a deposit. Your money then appears on the bank's balance sheet, and you become its creditor. The bank would become insolvent (and fail) if there were insufficient assets to meet the liabilities owed to all its creditors, and that tends to happen to banks periodically because their business is to lend your money for profit, not simply keep it in a vault.

You have not made a deposit of gold to BullionVault. You are not BullionVault's creditor and do not appear on its balance sheet. Technically your gold and silver is the subject of a bailment - a legal status through which physical property remains yours while it is in the care of another. A liquidator cannot consider it an asset of the company, so would have no claim over it and must return it to you in full.

BullionVault's finances are very strong. Very few companies maintain debt free cash and bullion reserves - at call - sufficient to cover the gross costs of running their operation for 6 years without any revenue. The standard equivalent requirement for the banking industry is 3 months.

No gold or silver bars are ever quite 100% pure. All bars at BullionVault meet the professional market's good-delivery standard of 99.5% or better for gold, and 99.9% or better for silver.

Using BullionVault, and just as in the professional market, you only buy and sell the pure 100% gold content (the 'fine' weight). Silver is traded "gross" of its tiny impurity, in line again with the professional bullion market.

Your gold and silver are stored in formally recognised bullion storage facilities, managed by specialist vault operators who are leading providers of precious metal vault services and secure transportation around the world.

Professional market vault operators produce what is called a Bar List. It's a bit like a bank statement, listing the account holder's stock of bars, and showing both the silver content or fine gold content of each bar and the total amount of bullion held. We publish the bar lists produced by the vault operators for BullionVault users' gold and silver.

BullionVault maintains the ownership records of all that bullion. Each day we publish on-line our daily register of owners, although we hide your identity by listing your holding against your alias. We also publish the total, and naturally the total matches the total on the bar list.

No other bullion business provides this daily and independent client-by-client proof that the right amounts of gold and silver are in the vault.

No. There are powerful controls.

First there are private protocols. We don't publish the details of those but they involve authorisation by several people from multiple companies.

There is also a transparent public protocol. For a removal to occur a 'Withdrawal Declaration' must be published on the BullionVault website's front page 24 hours before the bullion moves. This declaration identifies by alias the holder who is making the withdrawal. Any user can then check the published register to see that the withdrawing user has at least the quantity of gold which is being declared for withdrawal.

The vault operators are not allowed to complete a removal of bullion without confirming the validity of the public declaration for themselves.

Additionally under no circumstances can an amount exceeding the larger of 25 kg, or 5% of the total stored, be removed from the operator's control on any one day.

We regret we cannot offer tax advice specific to your circumstances. The following is general.

BullionVault operates from the UK where no taxes apply on the purchase of investment gold or silver bought for storage within the professional vaulting system.

Depending upon your tax jurisdiction if you sell your bullion at a profit it is likely that you'd be liable to a form of capital gains tax. For example, if a UK resident made profits exceeding £10,000 on gold in any one tax year - and no matter which jurisdiction they had traded in - they would be liable to a self-declared liability of 28% on profits above the £10,000 allowance. Many other western countries have similar systems, with an allowance and a tax on gains thereafter payable at a flat rate.

Users often arrange to sell some of their bullion each year, but ensure that any profit they make stays within their allowance. While prices are rising this has the effect of providing tax free growth.

No, sales tax is not due on gold or silver purchases.

BullionVault gold and silver are both VAT (sales tax) free - for as long as they are held in accredited vaults. If you choose to withdraw your gold it remains exempt, but 20% VAT will apply if you choose to withdraw your silver bullion.

In normal use you will receive your money paid directly to your bank account after you sell.

You can withdraw bars at any time. The fees vary according to the circumstances:

1. Where you cannot reasonably be paid safely by bank transfer you can withdraw physical gold for the reduced fee of 1%, plus transport and insurance costs.
2. Where the normal exit route to your bank remains viable, but you elect a physical withdrawal, then the cost is 2.5% for withdrawing whole gold bars, with a further 5% surcharge for withdrawals below 400 oz – to cover the cost of sourcing the necessary small bars or coins.

The fee for silver (whole bars only) is 10%.

BullionVault gold and silver are both VAT (sales tax) free - for as long as they are held in our vaults. Upon physical withdrawal gold remains exempt, but 20% VAT then applies on silver.

It is very important that we do not provide you with a certificate! Why not?

A formal certificate changes the legal status of what you own from physical gold, to a security evidenced by a certificate which purports to be backed by gold. Suddenly the law has to consider what would happen if there were more certificates in issue than there was gold backing them.

Title to BullionVault Client gold derives from the register which modern technology (the internet) allows us to put in the public domain.

You will receive a monthly statement which reflects the register. Also you can view the register whenever you want, and get your own daily electronic update of your register record using RSS and your preferred newsreader software. This evidences your ownership every day, with a new electronic advice confirming your register entry. It's a bit like a certificate which lasts for one day, but it is not a true certificate. BullionVault is structured for you to own gold, not a security.

Yes. You can choose whichever you prefer, although note that we dont store silver in every location.

We allow you to spread your holdings across multiple locations, and it has no cost implication for you. Your charges are worked out as if all the bullion was stored in the same place.

Lots of people choose to store their bullion in an overseas jurisdiction because they see this as a wise precaution against the re-imposition of capital controls at some stage in the future.

You can deposit any amount. Our users have invested between $100 and $8,000,000.

We welcome small deposits because users often choose to try the system with a small deposit and purchase before making a larger investment.

But please note that we recommend avoiding overall investments below $2,000. That's because the minimum monthly storage charge - $4 for gold and $8 for silver - may make your investment inefficient below this level.

Linking your bank account with your BullionVault account gives you a very high level of security.

Of course, we understand that it's not always possible to transfer funds from your BullionVault account to your original bank account.

For example, the original bank may fail, or your country of residence may impose restrictions that force you to leave and collect your money independently of your bank account. (In fact, it is for precisely these circumstances that many users want to buy gold for overseas storage.)

In exceptional circumstances, you can link your BullionVault account to a new bank account. When doing so, we will of course need to go through a strict security process to ensure the safety of your account.

Yes, of course. We offer a very friendly and knowledgeable telephone support service. Call us on weekdays during London office hours. All our support staff speak English and we also offer French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Hindi and Polish. Our contact numbers are immediately below this answer.