KYOTO (Reuters) -Gold refineries accredited by the London Bullion Market Association will be required to provide data to a digital platform from 2027 to increase transparency in the industry, the association’s head said on Monday.
The LBMA, which oversees London’s over-the-counter gold trading hub, the world’s largest, is pushing the market for more transparency as the gold price has risen 55% this year, and hit a record high of $4,381 a troy ounce on October 20, with broader concerns about U.S. tariffs adding to overall turbulence.
“We will have voluntary periodic reporting from January next year, moving to mandatory in 2027,” LBMA CEO Ruth Crowell told the association’s precious metals conference in Kyoto, Japan.
The association launched the Gold Bar Integrity Database in January for faster data collection and data processing from refiners, which are on its “good delivery” list.
Being on the “good delivery” list provides access to the London market, requiring refineries to source the metal responsibly. As of now, refineries report data on the country of origin of the material they source to the LBMA once a year.
“We want that to be an ongoing dialogue, but we also want to work with the refineries to make sure that it’s practical, that we’re not creating unnecessary burden for them,” Crowell told reporters.
The LBMA’s “good delivery” list includes 66 gold refiners and 83 silver refiners around the globe.
LBMA’s publicly available monthly data on the amount of gold held in London vaults, which goes back to 2016, was a crucial source of information for the market early this year when U.S. tariff concerns caused metal outflows to the United States, adding to worries about the remaining liquidity in London.
“It’s this data that we need to build on, and the Gold Bar Integrity infrastructure and ecosystem is just that,” Crowell said.
“Markets are becoming more and more complicated. We need to have dialogue with the refineries when you start to source from new jurisdictions. We need to all have trust in the gold that is underpinning these markets.”
(Reporting by Polina Devitt; editing by Susan Fenton)
