Gold Vaults of the World: Where the Gold Is Stored

The gold vaults of the world are not a legend but a small number of places where a large share of the physical gold is concentrated. The largest holdings belong to central banks and finance ministries: at Fort Knox, in the basement of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in the vaults of the Bank of England, at the Bundesbank in Frankfurt and beneath the Banque de France in Paris.

Then there is London as a trading hub. At the end of September 2026, the vaults of the Bank of England and of LBMA members together held 9,821 tonnes of gold and 28,985 tonnes of silver. This is where most of the world’s wholesale trading is settled, often without a single bar being moved.

A third group consists of bonded warehouses and private high-security vaults, for example in Singapore or Switzerland. Here dealers, companies and private investors store bars outside the banking system. The safe deposit box is the best-known option for private individuals – but it is a rental arrangement, not a specialised precious metals vault.

For investors, the type of storage matters most. With allocated storage, you own specific, numbered bars. The custodian only looks after them, and they do not form part of its estate if it becomes insolvent. With unallocated storage, by contrast, you only have a claim to a quantity of metal from a shared pool, which makes you a creditor of the custodian. According to the LBMA, the vast majority of London wholesale trading runs through such unallocated accounts.