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These days, more and more investors are investing in gold and silver bullion as a way to hedge against unstable paper assets. One of the age-old questions surrounding this prudent form of investing in physical precious metals remains: where do you store your treasure once you acquire it? On this page we will review some of the best offshore gold storage companies.
The companies listed here offer state-of-the-art offshore storage vaults for your physical gold and silver bullion coins and bars. Let’s begin with this table to give you a good overview of the market:
#1. Top Company Overall
SWP Cayman
🕿 1-345-640-2111
www.swpcayman.com
Stability: 
Security:
Infrastructure:
Storage Type: Segregated
Confiscation Risk: Extremely Low
Storage Costs: 0.5% to 0.85%/year
#2.
BullionStar
🕿 1 (877) 740 3777
www.bullionstar.com
Stability:
Security:
Infrastructure:
Storage Type: Segregated
Confiscation Risk: Extremely Low
Storage Costs: 0.39% to 0.59%/year
#3.
Gold Switzerland
🕿 41-44-213-6245
www.goldswitzerland.com
Stability:
Security:
Infrastructure:
Storage Type: Segregated
Confiscation Risk: Medium
Storage Costs: 1.24%/year
#4.
GoldBroker
🕿 1-800-780-0350
www.goldbroker.com
Stability: 
Security:
Infrastructure: 
Storage Type: Segregated
Confiscation Risk: Low
Storage Costs: 1.5% to 0.95%/year
#5.
Kitco
🕿 1-852-2827-7800
www.online.kitco.com.hk
Stability:
Security:
Infrastructure: 
Storage Type: Segregated or Allocated
Confiscation Risk: Medium
Storage Costs: $75/year + $35 transfer fees
#6.
GoldCore
🕿 353-1-632-5010
www.goldcore.ie
Stability:
Security:
Infrastructure:
Storage Type: Segregated
Confiscation Risk: Low
Storage Costs: 1% to 0.49%/year
#7.
Swiss Gold Safe
🕿 41 (0)41-884-0404
www.swissgoldsafe.ch
Stability:
Security:
Infrastructure:
Storage Type: Segregated
Confiscation Risk: Medium
Storage Costs: 513 to 4,050 Swiss Francs/year
What is Gold Storage & Why Does it Matter?
Gold storage is the idea of safely storing your precious metals in a way that is safe from theft, loss, government confiscation and other risks. Sophisticated investors don’t hold their gold bullion at home or at the bank as those strategies pose a risk on many levels. There are now several gold storage firms in various parts of the world that have developed state-of-the-art and highly secure gold storage vaults that mitigate all risks of theft, loss and confiscation.
Since the U.S., the UK and Australia are amongst the only developed nations in the history of the world with a track record of confiscating its citizens’ gold, it is a sensible idea for investors in those regions to store their gold and silver with a well-respected offshore gold storage company located in a politically-stable and economically-sound third-party country. In this article, we will consider both the best third-party storage countries and the companies storing gold for customers in these highly secure locations.
Top Things to Look For When Storing Your Physical Gold Offshore
There are six good characteristics to consider when investing your gold in an offshore storage company. These are all listed out below with a brief explanation of each factor:
Stability
Most important in the choice of where to keep your physical metals is the stability of the country in which you send them. Any country which is politically or economically unstable is a bad choice for obvious reasons. Gold seizure or confiscation is always a possibility in any country struggling fiscally or economically.
Security
Safety and security are your second most important considerations for a gold storage haven. This relates to both the safety of the facility and the likelihood of a major crime spree taking your metals home in a looting spree or major vault breach and theft incident. Any territory without low crime and ironclad safety should be strictly ruled out as a potential choice.
Infrastructure
Infrastructure refers to elements like a secure and sophisticated vault, good airports for ease of access to your metals, and secure roads along which precious metals storage companies like Brinks can move them in an armored car. This might be slightly less important than the first two, but it is nonetheless worth considering when you are looking abroad.
Legal issues
This is a more intangible quality in an offshore gold storage location but ultimately critically important. Strong legal systems mean that the government and its employees cannot simply seize the gold held in the jurisdiction’s vaults. They will also not simply cave in and turn over all of a person’s property to a foreign government just because a little pressure is applied to them diplomatically.
Privacy
You do not want your home government or regulatory agencies to be aware that you have squirreled away gold in Switzerland. This means that the country has to respect your rights to ownership and privacy of this ownership. Some countries have secrecy laws in this regard that are punishable by jail time when they are violated by their own citizens and residents.
Risk of Confiscation
Believe it or not, the United States is among the select and rare group of nations on earth that can claim to have actually confiscated all of its citizens precious metals in the past. This is why the U.S. is not your best choice of venue to vault your metals. Countries like Singapore, Switzerland, and the Cayman Islands on the other hand would never dream of such an action (and more importantly never have stooped to it before in their collective histories).
The Best Offshore Gold Storage Jurisdictions
Cayman Islands
It is no exaggeration when analysts claim that the Cayman Islands prove to be the most superior choice for storing precious metals in the Western hemisphere. This is because of a variety of excellent characteristics to the offshore British crown colony territory that start with proximity. The beautiful and highly visually appealing islands lie a half day or less travel from all of the major cities in North and South America as well as Central America and the Caribbean Sea island nations. All major U.S. airlines fly there along with British Airways (every day of the week in fact) to their modern airport the Owen Roberts International Airport of Georgetown. This airport is found a mere under kilometer (half mile) from the precious metals storage facility.
In general, it is discretion you are looking for in storing your metals. The SWP is a privately held and managed storage facility which does not suffer the burdens of any wealth reporting mandates to either foreign, British, or local Cayman Islands governments. The colony is also a completely tariff- and tax-free island. It has been this way for the island’s entire history. They have neither sales tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, nor even income tax here. Precious metals are not held captive to tariffs either entering or leaving the territory either. There is not even any VAT value added tax applied to buying or storing any form of precious metals in the Islands.
As an important financial center, the Caymans have grown to become the fifth biggest one on earth. As this industry has become the “bread and butter” for the average Cayman Islander, the government gets that complete economic freedom for people and investors pays the bills and keeps the islands prosperous. For politically stable jurisdictions, it does not get any better than being a British Overseas territory and crown colony.
This is because they enjoy rock solid British legal traditions and modern political systems that are fully backed up by the full military might of the United Kingdom and its historically formidable navy. The islands’ infrastructure and services are world-class as well. What’s more, unlike the mother country, the Cayman’s are strictly neutral in all global disputes and on all important world issues.
Dubai
The real estate development Mecca of the United Arab Emirates has another lesser known claim to fame. It is a world gold market and storage center on a large regional scale. This is undoubtedly a great choice for a gold storage place for the entire Middle East and Africa. As among the largest centers for trading gold, they handle the passage of a good fifth of all annual worldwide gold production here.
The DMCC constructed an enormous vault for the UAE back in only 2009, making it a modern state of the art security complex for your precious metals. It features all of the latest in inventory management and security systems. This new facility was built for both longer-term and shorter-term gold storage as well as for other valuables.
Dubai is also a tax free zone where precious metals are concerned. This makes it among the least expensive places on earth to both purchase and store your gold. Because the cost of storage for precious metals is so unbelievably cheap here, this is a solid choice for a place to store your gold holdings safely. Add to this that Dubai is FATCA- and FBAR-compliant and you can not go wrong in the UAE.
Switzerland/Liechtenstein
Most wealthy investors and families will agree on one thing— that Switzerland and neighboring principality Liechtenstein are the best places in which to keep your valuables and assets. This is not only because they look at protecting foreign assets as a core part of their entire economies and matter of economic survival, but also because they have been doing it so very well for more than 300 years now.
The internal politics of the nations are both stable and not intrusive governments of coalitions. It is this along with the longstanding regard for individual privacy that has maintained these two alpine nations at the top of the list of most trusted safe haven centers in the globe.
Switzerland and Liechtenstein possess world class infrastructure. Their laws protect precious metals ownership and possession using the highest level of security measures possible and with insurance policies too. Finally, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are fine geographical locations to visit in case you need easy access to withdraw your precious metals in person.
Singapore
There is a growing trend of moving gold storage to the Far East in recent years. This has helped such safe haven offshore jurisdictions as Singapore to steal some of Switzerland’s thunder for being the modern day go-to location for vaulting gold in the world. Singapore has all of the qualities you want to see in a gold storage venue. It is among the most stable and safest places in the world, and both economically and politically sound. It has begun to emerge as the leading precious metals hub for gold trading in Asia too.
On top of this, they have built the Singapore FreePort. This 25,000 square meter facility gives a significant boost to their efforts in developing the city-state into a world-leading gold storage and trading hub. They astutely modeled in on the Swiss FreePort model with climate-controlled and high-security storage in mind. It makes them the only such facility in all of Asia in fact. The vault is found conveniently located next door to the Changi Airport too, making it super convenient as well as highly secured and technologically advanced in its own unique duty free zone.
It all combines to make Singapore among the best places on planet earth to vault gold. Their prices are highly competitive, the premiums over spot are super low, and their storage charges are imminently reasonable. Corruption and crime are both nearly unheard of in the city-state, regulation is kept to a bare minimum, and even the tax structure is super friendly to investors and businesses alike.
Hong Kong
As the gateway to up and coming gold superpower China, Hong Kong is an interesting choice for an offshore gold storage location. In 2012 they opened up a brand new state of the art gold storage facility to meet the rising demand for gold storage and investments. It is easily the biggest one in all of Hong Kong and is conveniently found at the international airport. With a capacity for a thousand tons of gold storage, it can conceivably hold around 22 percent of the entire Fort Knox gold reserves.
This facility services commodity exchanges, governments, refiners, bullion banks, exchange traded funds, and wealthy families and individuals. Hong Kong’s long-enduring tradition of independence, professionalism, and integrity make it a world-class storage location for your personal gold holdings.
The Best Offshore Gold Investing Companies
Now we turn our attention to seven of the leading offshore gold investing companies. Along with a brief background on each of them, we will consider their various pros and cons.
#1. SWP Cayman Islands
SWP is an outfit based on Grand Cayman Island in what many experts consider to be among the safest of precious metals storage jurisdictions anywhere.
The firm is well-positioned in this the fifth largest financial services market on earth. North Americans find the convenience and ease of travel to their highly secured vaults to be an appealing feature of this gold bullion sales and storage company SWP that takes pride in its ease of buying back previously purchased precious metals from clients.
#2. BullionStar
BullionStar is one of the world’s largest precious metals dealers, and among the top-ranked in Singapore and Southeast Asia.
Located in one of the safest and least corrupt jurisdictions on earth, BullionStar boasts over 1,000 precious metals products in their catalog. Their Le Freeport District vaults offer state-of-the-art security and U.S.-based insurance broker Marsh provides comprehensive insurance for every deposit. With markups as low as 4% and low annual fees, there’s nothing not to love about BullionStar —a true rising star in the world of precious metals investing.
#3. Gold Switzerland
The precious metals investment division of Matterhorn Asset Management of Switzerland is called Gold Switzerland. This Swiss conglomerate specializes in preserving wealth for its considerable stable of high net worth institutions and individuals. They pride themselves on advising investors regarding gold purchases, sales, investments, and transfers of the precious metals. Their storage options for gold include their incredibly secure and highly regarded vaults in Switzerland. The pros are many and obvious. Cons are that their storage fees are higher than some others’. Swiss advice does not come cheap, especially not at Gold Switzerland.
#4. Gold Broker
Gold Broker.com prides itself on direct storage that does not involve intermediaries of any kind. As a division of FDR Capital based in offshore banking haven island nation Malta, this company helps both corporate and private party investors to purchase physically held gold and silver bullion and to store it completely outside of the U.S banking system, either onshore or offshore.
Their premiums are low and they feature a wide-range of secured offshore storage facilities from which you can choose, such as Zurich, Singapore, Toronto in Canada, and New York City. The firm’s glowing reviews demonstrate why GoldBroker.com has become so popular.
#5. Kitco Hong Kong
Kitco is a world famous name of an American-based advisory, holding, and transacting precious metals broker. Their Hong Kong storage division does exactly what you might reasonably expect — store your precious metals which they sell you in their vaults in Hong Kong off the coast of China.
Kitco takes great pride for being among the best-known and most highly regarded precious metals dealers globally. For those of you who want to internationalize your gold assets, you now have access to an Asian offshore storage center that is both secure and which features low costs.
#6. GoldCore Ireland
Ireland may not be the first location you think of for safe and secure precious metals storage, yet GoldCore Ireland has been effectively servicing and storing clients’ precious metals holdings here since 2003. They were the original gold broker in the Emerald Isle and they have grown to become the nation’s most-trusted and best-established gold operation as well. The company proudly services its clients not only in Ireland and America, but through more than 45 other countries globally.
With joint headquarters and storage offered in both Dublin and world gold center London, they serve a wide range of offshore and onshore clients. They sell bullion products for delivery and storage as well as wealth management and advisory services. GoldCore Ireland prides itself on its vast depth and variety of precious metals offerings, analysis for retail and professional investors, and its reliable information on the industry.
#7. Swiss Gold Safe
A final Swiss offering in the world of offshore bullion storage is Swiss Gold Safe Limited. This private corporation is based in Altdorf, Switzerland and dates back to 2006. The firm delivers medium-term to longer-term storage of valuables and precious metals in their privately owned highly secured Swiss-based vaults and also Liechtenstein-based vaults. In case you no longer trust Switzerland and its vaults since they divulged their private client banking records to the U.S. a few years back, then you can try their vaults in the picturesque neighboring principality of Liechtenstein. Swiss Gold Safe’s storage is fully insured and entirely independent from any banking system and regulatory authorities.
Top 7 International Gold Companies Summary
