The World Gold Council has introduced its new Retail Gold Investment Principles (RGIPs) to set the bar for product providers across the global retail gold market and encourage retail investors to have trust in gold.
The RGIPs will provide high-level, best practice principles for providers of all kinds of retail gold investment products and, through their adoption, ensure the highest levels of fairness, transparency and integrity are instilled across the market, the Council said in a statement.
The adoption of best practices are expected will lead to greater trust, benefiting customers and product providers alike, creating value and driving demand, it added.
To support the retail investor and provide them with knowledge and understanding of a gold investment, the Council has published an updated set of investor guidance namely the Retail Gold Investment Investor Guidance.
This has been broadened to further educate investors on the range of investment models for retail gold products. It also alerts investors to the presence of scams and fraudulent behaviour in the market and how best to identify and guard against them.
David Tait, CEO, World Gold Council, said, “We have taken time over the past year to engage with a wide range of industry stakeholders representing different global regions and a diverse range of business models to understand how we can best support the retail gold investment industry.”
“Our common objective is simple; make certain that investors, especially those considering gold for the first time, have absolute trust in the products they are offered and the providers with whom they chose to transact,” he said.