BullionVault Review

Precious Metals Available: Gold, Silver
Currency Holdings Available: EUR, GBP, USD
Go to BullionVault website >

BullionVault is where investors come to buy gold and silver for storage in a professional bullion vault. The process is secure yet straightforward, and prices are competitive. All BullionVault users own guaranteed professional grade gold and silver bullion, in standard bullion bar form. It is stored by Via Mat in a professionally recognised bullion storage facility in Switzerland, the UK or the USA. Users are able to buy and sell directly with other BullionVault users, via BullionVault's order board. The gold and silver does not move. Only the ownership changes. Anyone can participate. Private individuals can use the service to buy, own, store, and later sell, professional grade bullion – all at compelling prices usually available only in the professional bullion markets.

• 1 FREE gram of gold or ounce of silver • Buy gold and silver bullion • Choice of vaults in New York, Zurich or London • Allocated account - metal owned directly by you • Fully insured • Trade gold 24 hours a day, 7 days a week • Registered ownership of bars possible • Hold cash in USD, GBP and EUR • Competitive and transparent pricing • 10-15 minutes to set up an account • "Burglar Alarm" alerts you if account is accessed   About BullionVault... • $700 million of customer holdings end Oct 09 • Daily audit and publication of gold bar list • Annual independent vault audits

You own your gold and silver outright. Your bullion is not held as a liability in a gold or silver ‘account’ and there is no intermediating trust. The gold and silver you buy is your personal tangible property, stored economically in one of the safest places on Earth.

Choice of Vault Locations

BullionVault has vaults in three locations: London, New York or Zurich. These are specialist bullion market approved vaults operated by Via Mat, a leading provider of precious metal vault services and secure transportation around the world. You choose the location you want to own gold in. Silver is currently only available in the London vault. There is no settlement or delivery risk. You buy gold which is already in your chosen vault, using money which you have already paid in. Settlement occurs instantaneously at the point of trade.

How Your Gold and Silver is Stored & Protected

No BullionVault staff have physical access to your gold or silver. It is permanently stored in a segregated, named BullionVault (Clients) compartment in a vault run by Via Mat.

Via Mat’s daily statement is reconciled to BullionVault customer holdings every evening and the reconciliation is immediately published on the BullionVault site. You can at any time view it to prove that your personal holding is securely stored in your chosen vault.

Your bullion is insured and the cost is included in your custody charge. Your account has its own Burglar Alarm which sends text messages to your cellphone when there is any account access.

In ordinary circumstances your money can only exit to your original funding bank account. This is a failsafe characteristic which provides you with considerably greater security than is possible from your bank. You wouldn't expect BullionVault to be able to make payments on your behalf to millions of different places in the commercial world. So they disconnect them - all of them except the link your own bank account.

Guaranteed Gold & Silver Bar Quality

The gold and silver you buy on BullionVault is of permanently guaranteed quality because it has always stayed within the recognised storage facilities of the bullion market.

It was originally assayed at a recognised bullion market gold or silver refiner and at the established standard of purity for bullion (>99.5% for gold and 99.9% for silver). It was acquired from and delivered by formally recognised bullion market participants, and it stays in a formally recognised bullion vault.

Because of strict adherence to market procedures for handling bullion the bars retain their status as ‘Good Delivery’. This means that professional market buyers, who pay the best prices, will accept them, which they will not ordinarily do for bars with a private custody history.

So although owned by private customers BullionVault bars retain their full resale value, and this simple solution eliminates one of the significant costs of private gold and silver ownership.

Use Your Preferred Currency

BullionVault operates a multi-currency system. You can simultaneously maintain balances in US Dollars, Euros and Pounds Sterling, and you can seek opportunities to trade gold and silver using whichever currency is most advantageous to you at the time.

The BullionVault Public Order Board

BullionVault buys bars direct from the professional bullion markets. Once they receive confirmation from Via Mat that gold and silver bars are in the vault BullionVault multiply the assayed gross bar weight by its measured purity, and add the resulting pure weight to their inventory. BullionVault then distribute outright ownership of the gold and silver to customers - by quoting live trading prices on our public order board.

Benefits of the BullionVault Order Board

The order board is directly accessible to you and all other customers, as well as BullionVault itself. It is here that you bid for and offer gold and silver in open and fair competition. This is enormously powerful for you:

• If other customers are ready to sell, at a price a bit cheaper for you than BullionVault’s own price
  then you’ll automatically buy direct from them.
• If no-one is prepared to sell at your preferred price when you want to buy you can encourage them, by
  bidding up and closing the gap between market bid and offer prices. You can make the gap – or
  spread – compellingly narrow.
• If, when you choose to sell, you offer your gold and silver for a fraction less than the best available
  buying price, then you’ll become the cheapest source of gold and silver for the next buyer. They will
  buy directly from you, cutting out the middleman and gaining you extra money for your gold and silver.
• You don’t have to worry about quality if you buy direct from another individual. Their gold and silver has
  never been removed from the Via Mat vault. It is still the same guaranteed quality gold and silver, and
  BullionVault still warrants its integrity.
• You can even offer to buy and sell at the same time on the order board – effectively operating like a
  small scale professional bullion trader, but without the overheads.

What Does BullionVault Charge?

You pay low charges – which include insurance – and you do not pay extra for fabrication and delivery.

There are two charges for using the service - a deal commission and a custody charge.

You pay a commission on a reducing sliding scale, which starts at 0.8% and falls to 0.02%. On a $10,000 trade that’s from $80 for a one-off trade down to just $2 for a regular trader. The more you trade the less you pay, and the system remembers how much you have traded in each year – starting from the day you first register.

For both sales and purchases the rates diminish on the following scale:

There is no minimum commission charge. If you choose to buy your gold a single gram at a time you can. At the 0.02% rate you’ll be paying a 1 cent commission on trades up to $50 (about 3 grams).

The custody charge is calculated at a rate of 0.12% per annum. It is charged at the rate of 0.01% per month and subject to a $4 per month minimum. So your $40,000 holding of gold costs just $48 a year in custody charges – and this includes the cost of insurance. 0.12% is only slightly more than the wholesale storage rate and substantially
below most comparable bullion storage services. After 8 years at this rate you will still have paid less than 1% overall. The custody charge for silver is 0.48% per year on silver, billed monthly and subject to monthly minimum of $8.

About BullionVault

BullionVault is owned and operated by Galmarley Ltd, a company registered in Great Britain (No. 4943684). You can see a list of their shareholders at Companies House on: www.companieshouse.gov.uk. Their offices are based in West London and their services are delivered by their own computer machinery hosted in separate locations in Britain and USA, which they connect to and manage from their London offices.

Galmarley is involved exclusively in gold and silver and related information technology. It owns www.BullionVault.com and also www.galmarley.com. The Galmarley site is a free educational resource for researchers seeking information on gold’s monetary history, its modern role, and how it is traded around the world.

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