Singapore wants your central bank’s gold: the new vault race

The Monetary Authority of Singapore launched a gold vaulting service for other countries’ central banks on Tuesday 10 November. Foreign central banks, international financial institutions and sovereign entities can now keep allocated gold in Singapore’s national currency vault, MAS says, with space for up to 500 tonnes “with room to expand as demand grows.”

What MAS is offering

From the MAS media release of 10 November 2026. The release does not give fees.

MAS calls the aim “Loco Singapore”: gold that is priced, cleared and settled against metal physically held in Singapore, serving the Asia-Pacific region. The vault is the first piece. The clearing system and futures are meant to supply the trading that a storage hub needs.

Why central banks are rethinking where gold sits

Much of the official gold held abroad sits in London or New York. Shaokai Fan, global head of central banks at the World Gold Council, told CNBC that a central bank opening its vault to others is “not something that we see happening all that often,” and that central banks are reassessing where they store bullion amid geopolitical tensions. He cited Singapore’s political stability, legal framework and air connections.

The reasoning is familiar from the past few years. Gold is held as a reserve of last resort, so where it sits, and under whose laws, matters as much as how much there is. Some countries have brought gold home; others have spread it across more than one custodian. Neither MAS nor CNBC names any central bank that has signed up, and we would not assume demand until one does. Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong called it another option for diversifying reserve holdings: “It’s not a zero-sum game,” he said.

Singapore against the incumbents

The scale gap is large. London vaults held about 9,850 tonnes of gold at the end of October, CNBC reports, citing LBMA data, so Singapore’s initial 500 tonnes is about 5% of that by our arithmetic. Nikolas Kavalis of Metals Focus told CNBC London “remains the dominant global over-the-counter gold market,” and that storage alone is not enough: liquidity and trading are the harder part. He said neither Singapore nor Hong Kong yet has a deep trading ecosystem, and Hong Kong may have the edge with China-linked institutions.

Juerg Kiener of Swiss Asia Capital was blunter: “Singapore is very late to the party,” he told CNBC, arguing that a physical hub needs trade volume. He suggested Singapore could instead specialise in storage for financial institutions. Fan described the problem as “a bit chicken and egg”: liquidity attracts volume, but volume is needed to build liquidity. He sees Singapore and Hong Kong as complementary rather than rivals.

What it could mean for Asian buyers

Neither source says anything about physical premiums, and it is too early to measure an effect. If the clearing system and kilobar futures work as planned, gold could be priced and settled against metal held in Singapore without shipping it to or from London, which is the practical gain for the region. Whether that happens depends on volume, as the analysts above say. Central bank demand is the backdrop: see Central banks are still buying gold and October’s central bank buying.

Nothing here is advice or a forecast. The current price is on the gold price page.

Every figure here is as reported by the publications listed under Sources, at the time they reported it. Prices move; the live gold price has the current one. Nothing on this page is investment advice.