Physical Market Development

2023 has most certainly marked a return to a sense of ‘normality’ post pandemic.

Significant progress has been made to the Gold Bar Integrity initiative. A Request for Proposal (RfP) was launched – extending invitations exclusively to service providers with substantial industry knowledge and connections in the precious metals sector – and proposals are under review by independent market consultants. A Steering Group has been formed, and a scorecard has been developed to allow the Steering Group to benchmark the summary of the proposals prepared by the consultants, to enable them to make recommendations on which proposals to take forward through the process.

The International Bullion Centres work is progressing well, with a key focus on the Security Feature project. An additional four vendors carried out demonstrations of their security features for the vaults to determine applicability and have now been included on the LBMA website.

Sanctions

Following the suspension of the Russian refiners, and sanctions in place, there has been a lot of scrutiny on Refiners’ Responsible Sourcing third-party audits to ensure Russian material is not making its way into the market.

By way of reminder, under LBMA Good Delivery Rules, all Good Delivery List (GDL) Refiners are required to comply with UN, EU, US, UK, or any other relevant, economic and/or trade sanction lists. Breach of any of the relevant sanctions list (for example GDL refiners dealing with a sanctioned entity) would lead to removal from the Good Delivery List. Removal can involve a suspension or permanent de-listing.

It is the responsibility of the individual organisations to ensure they follow their own due diligence procedure to gain comfort and keep abreast with any new sanctions that may be imposed by the Government.