Formal complaint - outcome

Buy gold, silver and platinum bullion online at the lowest possible price

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BullionVault lets private investors around the world access the professional bullion markets. You can benefit from the lowest costs for buying, selling and storing gold and silver.

BullionVault is the world's largest online investment gold service taking care of $2 billion for more than 70,000 users. It is part-owned by both GBIT and Augmentum Capital.

Bars are stored in professional-market vaults in Zurich, London, Toronto, Singapore or New York. You choose where. Because of our size, you benefit from the low storage costs we have negotiated, which always include insurance.

You can sell at any time, without penalty, and your money will be wired the next business day. You can also withdraw your bars.

BullionVault is quick and easy. You could own any quantity of physical gold and silver bullion in about 2 hours.

On this page you'll learn who we are, then why we exist, and how we get you the best bullion at the cheapest prices.

Full members of the London Bullion Market Association
As full members of the LBMA BullionVault is part of the world’s largest physical bullion marketplace.
Winner of two Queen’s Awards for Enterprise
Twice recognized by the UK’s most prestigious business awards, BullionVault won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise Innovation in 2009 and an International Trade Award in 2013.
Voted Best Gold Broker Reader's Choice Awards
MoneyWeek is the UK’s best-selling financial magazine. In November 2014, readers voted BullionVault the best gold broker.

It's free to open an account and registration takes less than a minute. There's no obligation to trade.

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Why choose BullionVault?

World's biggest online bullion market
BullionVault manages $2 billion of bullion and assets, including some $1.3 billion worth of gold - more than the gold reserves of most countries.
Low rates for buying and selling
BullionVault charges a maximum of 0.50% to buy or sell gold, silver or platinum on the live order board. Above $75,000 you pay less. View our rates.
Deal in any size
We have over 70,000 users, who have invested between $100 and $8,000,000.
Next-day withdrawals
You can sell for instant settlement at any time. Funds will usually arrive in your bank account the next working day.
Investment grade bullion
All gold, silver and platinum bought through Bullion Vault is part of a good delivery bar, which can be traded on the world's professional markets.
Allocated gold, silver and platinum
You own your bullion outright. It’s your legal property. We only deal in allocated gold, silver and platinum – never unallocated.
High-security vaults
Your bullion will be stored in your choice of professional bullion market vaults, selected from among multiple locations worldwide.
Daily Audit
BullionVault is the only bullion business that publishes a daily audit online, which explicitly reconciles your gold, silver and platinum to formal third-party Bar Lists.
Wholesale storage rates and insurance
Insurance and storage is 0.12% per annum for gold. This is less than a third of the normal 0.4% charged as an annual management fee by most ETFs.
Set your own price
With BullionVault you can deal direct with other users. Both of you can quote prices, so you can both save dealing costs by cutting out the middleman.
Deal in your own currency
You can buy and sell in Euros, Pounds Sterling and Japanese Yen as well as US Dollars. This allows you to save the high cost of converting currency.
Deal at any time
BullionVault is the only place in the world where you can buy or sell gold, silver and platinum 24/7.

It's free to open an account and registration takes less than a minute. There's no obligation to trade.

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"Dramatically cuts the cost of gold ownership."

Financial Times

"Highly successful online trading site for physical gold and silver...Overcame key technological hurdles to link securely an investor's name with his or holding, stored in a vault in London, New York, Singapore..."

Daily Telegraph

"An online gold market with vaults storing more gold than the central bank reserves of Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland and Qatar combined."

Wall Street Journal

"It's easy to buy and sell small amounts, and you get the benefit of owning physical gold without the hassle of actually finding somewhere to store it."

MSN Money

The world's largest online investment gold service

More than 70,000 people from over 175 countries use it to buy and own some $2 billion of gold, silver and platinum

Why BullionVault was set up

BullionVault was set up to solve two problems that made it very difficult for private individuals to buy, store and sell gold in a simple, safe and cost-effective way.

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The problems

Private individuals didn't have access to the professional bullion market.

The best prices for gold and silver are available on the professional bullion market, where dealers, refiners, government agencies and bullion banks trade.

But this market only deals gold in 400 oz good delivery bars, which cost around $500,000 each. (The silver bars weigh 1,000 oz.)

This puts the best prices out of reach of most private individuals.

Private individuals didn't have access to professional vaults.

Good delivery bars are stored in accredited vaults.

The vaults have a high minimum monthly charge, so you would need about 15 of these 400 oz gold bars, worth around $7,000,000, to make it economic for you to open an account yourself.

The large starting balance tends to make the system inaccessible to private customers.

The solution

With BullionVault you can access the professional market and buy part of a good delivery bar - or even whole bars.

You'll benefit from the same low costs for buying and storing as the professionals, and you'll be participating in the deepest pool of physical gold and silver liquidity in the world.

  • Whether buying or selling you get the best professional bullion market prices.

  • All BullionVault gold and silver is good delivery, which is the purest and most trusted form of bullion. It commands the highest prices when you sell.

  • BullionVault metal is held fully allocated to BullionVault users. It is insured, and stored in your choice of location. The bullion is your legal, physical property.

  • No-one matches our dealing or storage charges.

It's free to open an account and registration takes less than a minute. There's no obligation to trade.

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Cut the cost of buying gold and silver

BullionVault is the world's biggest online bullion market. Economies of scale mean you can buy, sell and store gold and silver at close to wholesale prices.

The professional good delivery system gets you big savings, and so too does the internet. BullionVault connects buyers and sellers from all over the world. They can all quote prices to each other when they wish to buy or sell; and so can you. Like any exchange this price competition forces everyone - including BullionVault itself - to quote highly competitive prices, and you always get the best quoted price, from whoever is quoting it.

It's free to open an account and registration takes less than a minute. There's no obligation to trade.

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Rates and costs

Free

Opening account

Depositing funds

Insurance

0.50% - 0.05%

Commission for order board trades. More details

Buying/selling gold, silver or platinum

0.12%

Gold

0.48%

Silver or platinum

Per annum. Minimums apply

Storing gold, silver or platinum

FAQs

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, silver and platinum 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. In normal circumstances they quote prices 24/7 and 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 benchmark prices published by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA). These prices represent 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 London Prices published by the LBMA are used 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), half pallets of silver (16,000 oz multiples) or a minimum of 16 kg of platinum 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), a half pallet of silver (16,000 oz) or a minimum of 16 kg of platinum 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 and platinum 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
Chairman
Robert Glynne
Chief Executive
Justina Prytula
Finance Director
David Hemmings
CTO (Chief Technology Officer)
Adrian Ash
Research Director
Maria Vengut
Head of Customer Services
Daniel Jay
Marketing Director
Johnny Stewart
Product & Operations Director
Flora Ngu
Head of Trading

In total the company employs 32 people at its London office.

Having first won The Queen's Award for Enterprise, for Innovation, in 2009, BullionVault again won in 2013 for International Trade. The award is conferred by the UK's Prime Minister on behalf of the Queen.

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 also a member of the London Platinum and Palladium Market, [LPPM]. The LPPM is a trade association that acts as the markets principal point of contact with regulators and other official bodies, such as HM Revenue and Customs.

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 and available at short notice - 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 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, silver and platinum 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, silver and platinum 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 - available at short notice - sufficient to cover the gross costs of running their operation for five years without any revenue. The standard equivalent requirement for the banking industry is 3 months.

Good delivery bars are manufactured by accredited refiners who are regularly subjected to double-blind tests by independent assayers. The bars spend their lives in accredited storage facilities and are transported only by accredited couriers.

They are the only form of gold automatically trusted upon receipt by professional buyers.

Once a year we send in independent specialist assayers who inspect the bullion and report to our auditors, who then publish the report on their own website for your inspection.

We are completely confident regarding the quality of the bullion in our care, and provide a full, permanent, 100% guarantee of its quality.

BullionVault gold bars are all of known weight and purity, which exceeds 99.5%. As with the rest of the professional bullion market only the pure gold content (gross weight * purity) is traded and recorded. The gold in your BullionVault account is therefore 100% pure.

Silver and platinum are different. Good delivery silver and platinum bars are refined to 99.9% purity or better for silver and 99.95% purity or better for platinum and traded at gross weight. The good delivery silver and platinum in your account is at least 99.9% or 99.95% pure, respectively.

Your gold and silver is 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 gold and silver 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 online 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, silver and platinum are in the vault.

No. BullionVault settles immediately.

Your gold, silver and platinum are already safely in your chosen vault when you go online to buy. You pay the seller immediately with the cleared funds that you previously deposited into the BullionVault Client Money trust account. Your money becomes theirs, and their gold becomes yours. BullionVault guarantees that the deal, payment, and receipt of gold happen together, or not at all.

With this speed of settlement you gain enormously in flexibility if ever you need to act quickly - for example to move your property urgently across international borders. On BullionVault you can switch your tangible property between vaults in seconds. Thats much faster than your bank.

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.

BullionVault uses a highly secure and encrypted system architecture in wide use across industry and government. But we all realise these systems are imperfect, so BullionVault goes further to protect your property even if someone were to gain access to your account.

‘Burglar alarm’: In the form of an SMS message sent to your mobile phone your Burglar Alarm can be set to sound whenever your account is accessed, or an order placed. It will always sound when a withdrawal request is entered, and before we wire your money. (A nominal charge of $0.20 per SMS applies.)

Your linked bank account: When you transfer funds from your bank account to BullionVault the two accounts are linked together. Outbound funds only go to your linked bank account, which can only be changed with a written endorsement from your new banker. Even if a third party were able to access your BullionVault account, they could only sell gold at the market price, and send the money back to you.

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, silver or platinum 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 an individual resident in the UK made profits exceeding £11,300 on gold in the 2017/18 tax year - and no matter which jurisdiction they had traded in - they would be liable to a self-declared liability of 20% on profits above the £11,300 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, silver or platinum purchases.

BullionVault gold, silver and platinum are all 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 or platinum bullion.

Yes - you can.

The vast majority of users keep their metal safely in the vault. When they sell, they receive cash in their BullionVault account which can then be withdrawn back to their bank account.

But you can also withdraw the metal. The fees vary according to the circumstances.

Where you cannot reasonably be paid safely by bank transfer we reduce our fee to just 1%, plus transport and insurance costs, regardless of the size of your withdrawal.

Where the normal bank transfer could be used, but you elect a physical withdrawal:

Gold

  1. For whole, standard 400 oz gold bars the cost is 2.5% plus insured shipping.
  2. Smaller standard 100g bars cost about 3-5% - depending on the location they are going to. This includes shipping and insurance.
  3. We also allow withdrawal of non-standard amounts (e.g. smaller bars) but these cost 7.5% as we have to buy these products in to meet your request. The minimum withdrawal is 50g.

Silver

We only support withdrawal of whole 1,000 oz bars of silver bullion. The fee is 10%.

Platinum

We only support withdrawal of whole kilograms of platinum. The fee is 10%.

BullionVault gold, silver and platinum are all 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 and platinum.

Yes. See our IRA and SIPP information pages to learn how.

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. You can view the register online whenever you want. 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 don't store silver or platinum 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.

You may choose to try the system with a small deposit and purchase before making a larger investment.

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 or platinum - may make your investment inefficient below this level.

See an example of commission and storage fees using our cost calculator.

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, Polish, Russian and Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese). Our contact numbers are immediately below this answer.

Open an account

Try out buying and selling with a free sample.

Transfer funds

Make a bank transfer to your BullionVault account.

Buy gold, silver or platinum

In your choice of vault through the live order board.

Validate your account

Upload photo ID and bank statement.

Open an account today

Contact us

Email

Phone

UK and International: +44 (0)20 8600 0130

US and Canada toll-free: 1-888-908-2858

Opening Hours: 9am to 8:30pm (UK), Monday to Friday

Address

Galmarley Ltd T/A BullionVault
Landmark House (12th Floor)
Blacks Road
London   W6 9DP
United Kingdom