As at end May 2021, there were 9,499 tonnes of gold held in London vaults, valued at $580.1 billion. This equates to approximately 759,915 gold bars.
There were also 36,440 tonnes of silver, valued at $32.4 billion which equates to approximately 1,214,680 silver bars.
These figures provide an important insight into London’s ability to underpin the physical OTC market.
The data represents the holdings of six custodians offering vaulting services (all of which are LBMA members). They comprise three security carriers (Brinks, Malca-Amit and Loomis International Ltd) and three clearing banks (HSBC, ICBC Standard Bank and JP Morgan). Also included are the gold holdings held at the Bank of England (not an LBMA member) which offers gold (but not silver) custodial services to central banks and certain commercial firms that facilitate central bank access to the liquidity of the London gold market.
Those clearing members without their own vault operations – for example UBS - utilise their accounts with one of the LBMA custodians or the Bank of England and therefore do not contribute to the statistics to avoid double counting.