Offshore Broker’s Swiss gold solution is built around a direct relationship with a leading privately owned Swiss precious metals organisation. Through this partnership, clients gain access to a level of storage infrastructure that is not available through retail precious metals dealers or standard online gold platforms — fully allocated, individually segregated holdings at a high-security Swiss vault, with independent regular auditing and comprehensive insurance on all holdings.

The structure is straightforward. Offshore Broker establishes an offshore company in the jurisdiction that best suits the client’s circumstances — Cook Islands LLC, Nevis LLC, BVI IBC, Panama SA, or any of 25+ other options. That company then purchases precious metals through our Swiss partner. The metals are held in the vault in the company’s name, registered to the company, and entirely separate from other clients’ holdings. No pooling, no leasing, no counterparty exposure.

The client controls the company as its manager or director. Buying, selling, and delivery decisions are made by the company — which means they are made by the client, within the legal framework provided by the offshore company structure. When the client wants to add to the holding, sell metal, or arrange delivery to any location globally, the transaction is executed by the company without fabrication costs or structural delays.

The combination of Swiss custody and offshore ownership is more than the sum of its parts. Swiss vaulting gives physical security, political stability, independent auditing, and operational flexibility. Offshore company ownership gives asset protection — placing the metal outside the client’s personal estate, outside the jurisdiction of domestic courts, and within a legal framework specifically designed to resist creditor access. Neither protection works as well without the other. A domestic company holding Swiss gold is still personally owned. Personal gold held in Switzerland is still a personal asset. The structure — offshore company owning Swiss gold — is what creates the complete solution.

Most retail precious metals products — ETFs, certificates, unallocated accounts at banks — are paper instruments. They represent a claim on gold, not ownership of gold. The institution issuing the instrument holds gold (or claims to hold gold) on its balance sheet and issues certificates, shares, or account balances to customers. The customer is a creditor of the institution, not an owner of physical metal.

This distinction becomes critical in a financial crisis or institutional failure. When a bank that holds unallocated gold fails, its gold holdings form part of the general asset pool available to creditors — including the customers who thought they owned gold. ETF holders face similar exposure: the ETF’s gold is custodied by a third party, sub-custodied by further parties, and the chain of ownership is opaque and contractually complex. In practice, most retail gold investors own paper claims, not metal.

Fully allocated gold is different. Your metals exist as specific identified physical objects — bars or coins with serial numbers, weights, and assay certificates — registered entirely to your account (or your offshore company’s account). There is no issuer that can fail. There is no claim to default. The metal is yours, physically and legally, held by a custodian whose role is storage and safekeeping, not the creation of financial instruments.

Individually segregated storage takes the protection a step further. In segregated storage, your metal is physically separate from other clients’ holdings — stored in a dedicated space or container assigned exclusively to your account. In commingled allocated storage (which many providers offer as “allocated”), your bars are registered to you but physically mixed with other clients’ bars of the same specification. While commingled allocated is still better than unallocated, it introduces a layer of operational complexity at delivery: your specific bars may need to be located and separated before delivery can occur.

With individually segregated storage, your bars are always in their designated location. Delivery, pickup, or transfer of your specific metal can be arranged quickly and without the fabrication costs that some providers charge to source equivalent metal when they cannot immediately locate your specific bars.

The Offshore Broker Swiss gold solution provides fully allocated, individually segregated storage as standard. There is no cheaper commingled option — we specifically chose a partner whose storage model reflects the level of protection our clients’ offshore structures are designed to provide.

The most important feature of the Offshore Broker precious metals solution is not the Swiss storage — it is the offshore company that owns it. Physical gold stored in Switzerland under your personal name provides geographic diversification but limited legal protection. A domestic creditor who obtains a judgment against you personally can pursue your Swiss-held assets through legal proceedings that compel you, as the account holder, to repatriate or transfer assets. You are the legal owner; the creditor can reach you.

When the gold is owned by an offshore company — a Cook Islands LLC, a Nevis LLC, or a BVI IBC — the legal owner is the company, not you personally. A domestic judgment against you is a judgment against you as an individual. It does not automatically give the creditor access to assets owned by a foreign company. To reach the company’s assets, the creditor must pursue the company — not you — in the offshore jurisdiction where the company is registered.

This creates a meaningful legal barrier. Pursuing a Cook Islands LLC requires engaging Cook Islands-licensed legal counsel, commencing proceedings in the Cook Islands courts, demonstrating a valid claim under Cook Islands law, and doing so within any applicable statute of limitations. For most creditors, the cost-benefit calculation does not support this effort — particularly when the available damages from a Cook Islands proceeding are uncertain and the process is designed to protect the structure’s assets, not to make them accessible.

For clients who want the strongest possible protection, we add a Cook Islands Trust above the offshore company. The Trust owns 100% of the LLC. The LLC owns the gold in Switzerland. The client manages the LLC day-to-day and directs buying, selling, and storage decisions. When a creditor threat arises, the trustee takes control of the LLC under the trust deed’s protective provisions — removing the client as manager and taking direct custody of the LLC membership interests. This makes even the LLC’s membership interests unreachable through domestic proceedings, because they are owned by the trustee, not by the client.

The Cook Islands Trust + LLC + Swiss Gold combination represents the complete solution for clients who want: physical gold in a premium storage jurisdiction, owned through a structure that provides genuine creditor protection, with a trust at the top that has a 30-year track record of resisting domestic legal attack. Each element reinforces the others. The gold is real. The company owns it. The trust protects the company. The jurisdiction supports all three layers.

Offshore Broker can establish the company alone (for clients who want gold protection without a full trust structure) or the complete trust-and-company arrangement (for clients who want the maximum protection available). We discuss both options in the initial consultation.

Gold. The primary and most widely held precious metal for wealth preservation. Investment-grade gold (99.5% purity and above) is exempt from Swiss VAT, making Switzerland one of the most cost-efficient jurisdictions in the world for gold storage. Gold bars are available in standard denominations from 1 gram to 400 troy ounces (the standard London Good Delivery bar). Coins — including Krugerrands, Maple Leafs, Britannia, and Philharmonics — are also available for clients who prefer divisible, internationally recognised denominations.

Our Swiss partner provides access to LBMA-certified gold — gold that meets the London Bullion Market Association’s standards for purity and provenance. LBMA certification is the global standard for gold that can be traded and delivered within the international wholesale market without re-assay. This matters for delivery and resale: LBMA-certified bars are immediately accepted by dealers and institutions worldwide without the additional cost and delay of testing.

Silver. Physical silver is available in bars and coins. Note that silver is subject to Swiss VAT as it does not qualify for the VAT exemption applicable to investment gold. For clients wanting silver holdings within their offshore company, we advise on the VAT treatment and any implications for storage and delivery before purchase.

Platinum. Platinum is available in bar and coin form. Like silver, platinum does not qualify for the Swiss investment gold VAT exemption, though the treatment varies by product type. Platinum has historically been used as both an industrial metal and a wealth preservation asset, and its supply is more concentrated geographically than gold — making physical holdings attractive to clients seeking diversification within their precious metals allocation.

Palladium. Palladium is available for clients with specific commodity exposure requirements. Its price is more volatile than gold or platinum and its market is more thinly traded, but it remains a physically deliverable precious metal that can be held within the offshore company structure.

Mixed portfolios. Many clients hold a combination of metals within their offshore company — gold as the primary wealth preservation asset, with smaller allocations to silver, platinum, or palladium for diversification. The offshore company can hold multiple metal types simultaneously, and each holding is individually registered and separately stored. We discuss the optimal allocation in the initial consultation, taking into account the client’s existing portfolio, tax position, and specific objectives for the precious metals holding.

The vault used by Offshore Broker’s Swiss partner operates to the highest commercial storage standards available in Switzerland. It is privately owned — not a bank vault subject to bank regulatory supervision or balance sheet considerations — and is purpose-built for the storage of precious metals and high-value assets. Physical security includes multi-layer access controls, 24-hour monitoring, seismic and environmental sensors, and multiple redundant systems.

Independent auditing is conducted regularly by a third-party firm with no connection to the custodian. The audit confirms the presence, weight, purity, and registration of all holdings in the vault. Audit reports are available to clients as confirmation that their specific holdings are physically present and correctly recorded. This is distinct from the self-certification that many less rigorous storage providers offer — where the custodian confirms its own holdings without independent verification.

Full insurance coverage is provided on all holdings. The insurance is underwritten by international insurers and covers the full market value of the metals stored against theft, damage, and loss. The policy is held in the custodian’s name but covers all client holdings on an individual basis — not as a blanket pooled policy that might be insufficient to cover all claims in a major loss event.

Clients receive regular holding statements confirming the details of their specific metals — the bar numbers, weights, purity, and current market value. These statements are issued by the custodian and provide the documentation needed for asset reporting, estate planning, and any due diligence requirements.

The storage fee structure is straightforward: an annual fee calculated as a percentage of the metals’ market value. There are no purchase commissions hidden in the pricing, no spread manipulation on buy/sell transactions, and no fabrication fees for standard deliveries of existing allocated bars. We are transparent about all fees before the client commits to any purchase.

For clients who want to arrange delivery, pickup, or transfer of their metals, requests can be made at any time. International delivery is available to most destinations, subject to applicable import regulations in the destination country. In-person pickup at the Swiss vault can be arranged by appointment. Inter-vault transfers to other approved storage facilities are also available for clients who want to diversify their storage geography within the Swiss precious metals infrastructure.

The phrase “gold investment” covers a wide range of instruments with very different risk profiles. At one end is physical allocated gold in your name, stored in a vault where you have verifiable ownership of specific bars. At the other end are leveraged gold futures and ETFs that are themselves leveraged or use derivatives. In between are gold ETFs, gold certificates, unallocated bank accounts, and digital gold tokens.

For wealth preservation purposes — keeping purchasing power over time, protecting against currency debasement, and holding an asset that cannot be inflated away — only physical gold does the job that gold’s advocates describe. Paper gold performs like gold in normal market conditions. In the specific scenarios where investors most need gold to perform — financial crises, bank failures, currency collapses, systemic stress — paper gold instruments are subject to the same counterparty and institutional risks as every other financial instrument.

Gold ETFs hold physical gold through custodians and sub-custodians. The largest ETFs (SPDR GLD, iShares IAU) are backed by physical gold held at HSBC and JPMorgan respectively. The gold is there in normal conditions. But in a systemic banking crisis, the counterparty chain — ETF issuer, custodian, sub-custodian — introduces risks that pure physical ownership does not. The ETF shares are also securities subject to domestic securities law — they can be seized, frozen, or subject to forced sale under domestic court orders in a way that physical allocated gold in a foreign vault, owned by an offshore company, is not.

Gold certificates are even further removed from physical ownership. A gold certificate is a contractual claim on an institution — typically a bank — for a quantity of gold. The institution may or may not hold physical gold to back the certificates. If it holds unallocated gold in another institution’s vault, the chain of potential failure extends further. Gold certificates have defaulted in multiple historical episodes.

Digital gold tokens — blockchain-based instruments backed by physical gold — represent a newer variation. Some are backed by genuinely allocated physical gold held by reputable custodians; others are partially backed or rely on complex smart contract mechanisms. Due diligence on the underlying custody arrangement is essential before any investment.

Physical allocated gold in Switzerland, owned through an offshore company, has none of these layers. There is no issuer. There is no custodian chain. There is no counterparty. There is your company, which owns specific identified bars of gold, held in a vault in Switzerland, insured against loss, and audited independently on a regular schedule. This is what Offshore Broker provides — not an alternative financial instrument, but direct ownership of physical metal in the most trusted storage jurisdiction in the world.

Precious metals held through an offshore company are not invisible to tax authorities — they are reportable, and any competent offshore provider makes this clear from day one. What the structure provides is legal protection of assets, not tax concealment.

For US persons, the key reporting obligations are as follows. The offshore company is a foreign corporation — Form 5471 is required annually for US shareholders with more than 10% ownership. If the company holds a foreign bank account (which it typically will, to make purchases), FBAR (FinCEN 114) applies for accounts exceeding $10,000. The precious metals themselves may be reportable as specified foreign financial assets under FATCA on Form 8938 depending on their value and the client’s filing status. When the company sells metals or distributes proceeds, the gain is a taxable event and must be reported.

The tax treatment of gold depends on the nature of the asset and how it is held. Physical gold held as an investment is typically taxed as a collectible in the US — subject to a maximum 28% capital gains rate rather than the standard long-term capital gains rate. This applies regardless of whether the gold is held personally or through an offshore company. The offshore structure does not change the rate; it provides asset protection, not tax reduction.

For non-US clients, the reporting requirements vary significantly by home country. Many civil law jurisdictions require disclosure of foreign company ownership and foreign asset holdings on annual tax returns. CRS (the Common Reporting Standard) means that the offshore company’s banking information is automatically exchanged between the company’s bank jurisdiction and the beneficial owner’s home country tax authority — transparency is the norm, not the exception.

The structure is designed for clients who want to hold their assets legally, report them correctly, and protect them from legal claims — not for clients who want to hide assets from their home country tax authority. Offshore Broker is explicit about this in every client engagement. Clients who indicate a desire to use the structure for tax concealment are not engaged.

The good news is that for most clients, the tax outcome of holding gold through an offshore company is straightforward: the tax on gains is the same as it would be for domestic gold ownership, the structure is fully disclosable, and the asset protection and storage advantages are available to any client who approaches the structure correctly. We connect every client with qualified tax advisers who specialise in offshore structures before any purchase is made.

1. Initial consultation. We begin with a conversation about your objectives — why you want to hold precious metals offshore, what amount you are considering, what your existing offshore structure looks like (if any), and what your home country tax position is. This is not a sales call; it is a needs assessment. The right structure for a US person holding $500,000 in gold as part of a Cook Islands Trust is different from the right structure for a UK person holding £200,000 in gold as a standalone investment. We advise on the appropriate company jurisdiction, company type, and how the gold holding fits within any broader wealth protection strategy before any paperwork begins.

2. Company formation. We establish the offshore company in the selected jurisdiction. This involves KYC documentation for the client (certified passport, proof of address, source of funds), name registration, preparation of the company charter or operating agreement, appointment of a registered agent, and government filing. Formation takes 3–10 business days depending on the jurisdiction. Cook Islands LLC and Nevis LLC are the most common choices for clients who also want asset protection; BVI IBC and Panama SA are options for clients who want a lower-cost company without the premium protection jurisdictions.

3. Swiss storage account setup. Once the offshore company is established, we introduce the company to our Swiss precious metals partner. A storage account is opened in the company’s name, with the standard KYC and AML documentation required by the Swiss custodian. The company is the client of the Swiss custodian — not the individual — and all storage, purchasing, and delivery arrangements are made through the company.

4. Purchase and transfer. Metals are purchased by the company through the Swiss partner. Existing physical metals held elsewhere can be transferred into the Swiss vault and re-registered to the company (subject to assay confirmation for bars not already LBMA-certified). The purchase price is based on spot pricing with a modest premium depending on the metal and denomination. All fees — storage, insurance, and any transaction costs — are disclosed before the purchase is made.

5. Ongoing management. The company receives regular holding statements and audit confirmations. Annual company maintenance (registered agent fee, government filing) is handled by the registered agent in the offshore jurisdiction. Tax reporting support — preparation of Forms 5471, FBAR, and 8938 — is available through our network of specialist international tax advisers. Purchases, sales, and deliveries can be arranged at any time through the company’s account with the Swiss custodian.