Can you prove my gold is in the vault ?
What stops BullionVault itself removing my gold ?
Is Via Mat associated with BullionVault ?
Does Via Mat itself warrant gold bar quality ?
How does gold get to the vault after I buy ?
Why is my bullion not stored in a bank ?
Via Mat is the independent professional bullion market vault operator selected by BullionVault to look after BullionVault gold.
Via Mat is one of the largest vault operators and secure transportation businesses on Earth. They operate widely in North and South America, Europe and the Far East. In their home country of Switzerland they dominate the business of physical assets custody and transportation. They are the trusted carrier Swiss banknotes, as they travel between the central bank and the various branches of the Swiss banking industry.
Your gold is protected by Via Mat's extensive physical security measures, and by externally underwritten insurance. It would be impossible for any private store of bullion to be so thoroughly secured, and then insured at such low cost (included within your custody charge).
You can learn more about Via Mat from their own website. Here are direct links to their London, Zurich and New York location webpages. These are the locations where BullionVault gold is stored.
Yes. Via Mat sends us bar lists evidencing what they hold in the vault for BullionVault. These lists detail the individual bars in our section of the vault, and their assayed gold content.
Every business day we publish this bar list on the BullionVault website, and we also publish our custody lists daily - but with alias names which users can recognise for themselves while they remain completely useless and meaningless to everyone else.
You can see your own holding, check our totals, and cross check the custody list totals directly to the bar lists. All this is on the publicly accessible 'DAILY AUDIT' page. You can view it right now - even if you are not a BullionVault customer. Click here for details of the procedure.
The DAILY AUDIT page is also accessible via RSS, allowing you and any member of the public to complete an easily automated check of the customer by customer figures it lists every day of the year.
Someone has to have authority to instruct Via Mat on what to do with your gold, and BullionVault's management has that authority. So you should be rightfully concerned that controls exist to prevent a dishonest BullionVault manager from authorising a removal of gold from the vault.
There are careful controls on this which you will quickly see eliminate the possibility.
There are two set of controls - Public and Private. Public controls exist to make the process of bullion withdrawal extremely transparent. This is how it works.
Private controls are kept secret. They require, among other things, authorisation checks and acknowledgements by multiple individuals in multiple organisations, which make it impossible for a withdrawal to be authorized by a rogue employee.
Yes. And because of their excellent record and highly secure infrastructure Via Mat is able to cover itself at extraordinarily low cost - far lower than you could ever get it for gold held in private custody. You get the benefit of this.
BullionVault is responsible for ensuring that the cover maintained by Via Mat is at least equivalent to the value of all the gold Via Mat holds on behalf of BullionVault Clients.
BullionVault is entitled to demand cover up to 50% in excess of the prevailing market value of gold, and to have the cover in place within 24 hours.
We are also entitled to receive documentary evidence of that cover, which we are allowed to publish on the BullionVault website for viewing by parties benefiting from the protection it provides.
If you are logged in and an owner of gold in BullionVault the insurance certificate is available for viewing.
The cost of this insurance of your gold is included in your annual custody charge of 0.12%. That's still less than 1% after 8 years.
No. Via Mat is a service provider to BullionVault and BullionVault is a customer of Via Mat. The management and the capital of the two businesses are entirely separate and independent of each other.
This is as it should be because it means we have no influence over the production of bar lists, against which we prove your gold ownership - every day.
As an entirely independent company Via Mat obviously does not endorse the BullionVault way of buying and storing gold or in any way give BullionVault special treatment or services prejudicial to its other commercial customers, who also store gold bullion in Via Mat vaults.
But Via Mat does accept responsibility for the professional custodianship of the physical bullion bars described in its bar lists. Via Mat International Ltd has warranted to BullionVault that "by its own capabilities in London, and through VM Group companies in Switzerland and the USA it is competent to supply the receipt, collection, transportation, storage, insurance and onward delivery services relating to gold bullion according to the generally accepted standards of the bullion markets in London, Zurich and New York".
BullionVault and its users have a right to expect Via Mat to perform its bullion custodian role with due care and professionalism. Via Mat takes great pride in ensuring that it executes this responsibility as professionally as any organisation on Earth.
No. A gold bar delivered to Via Mat by the local bullion market is trusted because of its status as 'Good Delivery'. Its chain of integrity assigns responsibility back through continuous professional vault storage, and the ultimate responsibility for gold bar quality rests with the introducer of the bar into the chain.
This trust may be audited by both bullion market officials and the bar's owner. Under its agreement with Via Mat BullionVault has the right to send in an independent official assayer at 48 hours notice. This assayer will be accompanied in the vault and will perform a range of tests on the actual bars which re-affirm with great reliability their true gold content.
If the gold content of a bar fails to match the published assay on the list (an event of extreme improbability) this is not deemed a Via Mat failing but a failing in the chain of integrity, and BullionVault (not Via Mat) accepts responsibility. However BullionVault relies on the integrity of its bullion market suppliers, and on their mutual dependence on chains of integrity. Everyone involved is powerfully motivated by their own reputation, the reputation of the local market, and all the way back to the reputation of the refiner, to resolve such a circumstance without loss to a user of the bullion market like BullionVault. Only if this chain were to fail to redeem any substandard bar would BullionVault's own guarantee and capital resources be required to protect BullionVault users.
In the extremely unlikely event of a rogue good delivery bar being found to circulate as good delivery, and of the chain of integrity being an insufficient protection, the capital of BullionVault is easily able to absorb the loss.
Your gold was already in the vault when you bought it so no shipment of bullion is required to settle your purchase.
You can only offer your money to buy gold when you have wired funds into the BullionVault client account. In the same way sellers on BullionVault are only allowed to offer gold when it is already safely secured in the vault.
This dramatically reduces the settlement cost and is a key contributor to the very low trading charges on BullionVault. Delivery is usually paid only once, as bullion is originally bought and delivered into the vault by a BullionVault purchase on its own account. Thereafter the bullion may change owners many times without moving.
Read more about how gold gets into the vault here.
Within BullionVault your gold is your outright property.
We are very specific about this. We disassociate BullionVault from unallocated gold and gold accounts. BullionVault stores your physical gold bullion.
But aside from unallocated accounts gold ownership schemes frequently abstract your gold ownership by placing a formal trust between you and the gold. This mechanism would vest legal title in the trust, and you would become a beneficiary of the trust. You would then need to develop an unhealthy interest in trust deeds to understand your position. At any rate you would not personally own gold.
BullionVault does not do that. Under our Terms and Conditions you employ BullionVault as your agent and impose on us a formal and legal duty of care in arranging the storage of your gold. In the modern world this is an uncommon ownership arrangement which we invite you to read about in detail in our FAQs under the subject of bailments.
We believe direct personal ownership combined with a professional custodian is the optimal bullion storage solution in terms of costs, transparency and security.
This is one of the commonest questions asked by our customers. You are invited to read the surprising answer in our Safety FAQs here.
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