What to ask a vault · Who Audits It?
Question Three — Who Checks, and May I Watch?
An audit performed by the custodian on its own holdings is a stock check. Independence is what makes it an audit.
Come and see the vault before you move anything. No account relationship is required to visit.
Allocated
Your specific bars. Not a claim on a pool
9R
Highest UL vault rating available
1983
Operating on the Galt Ocean Mile since
Audited
Independent verification, and you can attend
Self-verification is not verification
Most storage failures in this industry were not discovered by the custodian. They were discovered when someone independent finally counted, or when a client asked to see their metal and could not. A custodian who both holds the metal and verifies it has no external check at all.
Frequency matters as much as existence. An audit conducted once at the outset confirms a position at a moment; a periodic audit confirms it continues to be true. The second is what makes the arrangement verifiable rather than merely documented.
What to ask
- Who performs the audit, and are they independent of you?
- How often?
- Is it a full count or a sample?
- May I attend, or send my own representative?
- May I see the most recent report?
Why independence is the point
A facility confirming its own holdings is asserting rather than verifying. An independent audit means somebody with no interest in the answer has counted what is present and compared it against what is recorded.
Ask who performs it, how often, whether clients can see the result, and whether you can arrange your own inspection. A facility comfortable with all four is a different proposition from one that answers only the first.
How we handle it
- 01Independent audit rather than self-verification.
- 02Clients may attend.
- 03You may inspect your own holding at any appointment.
- 04Records available to you and anyone you name in writing.
The single best test of a storage arrangement is asking to see your own metal at short notice. A real custodian finds that unremarkable. Anywhere that treats it as a difficult request has told you something important, and the request itself costs you nothing.
Common questions
- Can I attend the audit?
- Yes. A custodian who will not permit that is asking for trust it has not evidenced.
- Can I just turn up?
- Access is by appointment for security reasons, but arranging one should be routine rather than difficult.
- Is a sample audit enough?
- It is common practice. Ask what the sampling basis is and whether allocated holdings are individually verified.
- Can I send my own auditor?
- Yes, with notice.
What we store
Gold Bullion
Gold is the easiest metal to store and the one where the storage arrangement matters most, because a large value occupies very little space and is completely fungible once it leaves your sight.
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Bulk Silver
Silver is where storage economics become real. The same value in silver occupies roughly seventy times the volume of gold, and volume is what a vault charges for.
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Sovereign Coins
Coins introduce something bars do not: condition is part of the value, so how they are handled and what they sit in matters as much as where they sit.
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Platinum & Palladium
Platinum and palladium store like gold and trade in much thinner markets, which makes documentation and provenance disproportionately important.
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Dealer & Business Holdings
A dealer's storage problem is different from an investor's. The metal moves constantly, it has to be countable at short notice, and somebody else's accountant will eventually ask about it.
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Leaving Pooled or Overseas Storage
A common reason people call: they have read their storage agreement properly for the first time and discovered it says something other than what they assumed.
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More what to ask a vault
Is It Allocated and Segregated?
Three words that sound similar and mean very different things. This is the question that matters most and the one most often answered vaguely.
Read more →
How Is It Insured?
Every vault says "fully insured". The useful questions are who the insurer is, what the limit is, what is excluded, and who is the named insured.
Read more →
What If the Vault Fails?
The uncomfortable question, and the one that most cleanly separates arrangements that differ only in marketing.
Read more →
Tell us what needs to move.
What, from where, and roughly when. You do not need an inventory to start the conversation, and if the job belongs with an armored carrier we will say so on the call.