Bullion and precious metals
Gold, silver and platinum held in bars or coins, insured in the specie class, with strict conditions on vault, transit and counting.
A 400 troy ounce bar, the London Good Delivery standard, weighs around twelve kilos and is worth over a million dollars at 2026 prices. Specie underwriters cover it in the vault, in transit between two strongrooms and at the custodian. The policy describes the vault's construction and alarm line by line and sets escort rules for transit; above all it requires a count: an inventory by weight and bar number is the only defense against unexplained disappearance. That peril is excluded from many policies anyway: no proof of an event, no indemnity. For allocated metal, held in the client's name, the policy resembles bailment cover. Unallocated metal is a mere claim on the custodian: on insolvency the client is an unsecured creditor, and insurance does not change that. What worries the underwriter is accumulation on a single site.
Textbook case: a custodian keeps 2,000 bars of 400 ounces in one vault, around 1.6 billion dollars at 2,000 dollars an ounce. The insurer caps its line at 500 million per site. A robbery takes 30 bars: the loss, 24 million, is paid after the count by bar number is checked.
bullion insurance, gold bar insurance, precious metals cover, vaulted gold insurance
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