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A chartered accountant and a marketer have teamed up to give small-time retail investors access to the gold market.
Glen Jenkins and Cam Maclachlan have just launched Goldie – a platform a bit like Sharesies for people who want to buy gold.
Their pitch is that Goldie enables people tobuy fractions of gold bars – stored in a vault in central Wellington – for as little as around $10.
The idea is that Goldie buys a 1kg gold bar, figuratively divides that bar into 10,000 pieces, and sells those pieces to investors at the price gold is traded at on the global spot market.
If investors want out, Goldie buys back their share of the gold bar at the spot price at the time they want to sell.
Of course, Goldie doesn’t physically break up the bar and give investors bits of gold.
Rather, the bar gets stored in a special safe at New Zealand Vault – a long-established trader, which also vets the gold.
Speaking to the Herald, Jenkins said Goldie bought its first bar of gold for $106,000 and hoped to keep buying bars as more investors joined the platform.
He said the point of the business was to make investing in gold more accessible, enabling small-time investors to pay the same price per gram as those who have more money to invest through more traditional channels.
Goldie aims to make money by charging investors a fee when they buy and sell shares of gold bars.
It charges 0.89 per cent of the value they buy and 0.5 per cent of the value they sell.
Those with investments worth more than $300 are also charged an “insurance and storage” fee of at least $1.50 per month, or 0.33 per cent of the value of their investment each year.
So, someone who paid $10,000 to buy some gold would pay Goldie $89 to make the investment. Assuming the value of that gold didn’t change, they’d then pay an “insurance and shortage” fee of $33 over a year.
“We’re going to need a few people to get on board,” Jenkins admitted.
The Goldie gold investment platform.
On its website, Goldie assured, “If something were to happen to Goldie, your investment is safe as it is held in an independent company, separate to Goldie.
“Physical gold held by the independent company may be liquidated and you would receive the value of your investment at the market spot price at the time of liquidation.”
Asked how long it would take Goldie to pay out an investor who wanted to sell up, Jenkins said four days maximum.
Goldie is working with Catalist – a licensed and regulated stock exchange for growth businesses.
It has to comply with the Financial Markets Conduct Act, which governs the way financial products are offered, promoted, issued and sold.
Jenkins has a background in finance and accounting at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Loyalty NZ, KPMG and Ārepa.
Maclachlan has experience in sales and marketing, including for a consultancy he founded, as well as for the likes of Pic’s Peanut Butter and Ogilvy.
The pair hope to introduce other physical assets such as valuable art, cars and collectibles to the platform in coming years.
“Our goal is to democratise access to real assets by enabling people to collectively share investment in items they wouldn’t otherwise be able to own individually,” Maclachlan said.
Jenée Tibshraeny is the Herald’s Wellington business editor, based in the Parliamentary press gallery. She specialises in government and Reserve Bank policymaking, economics and banking.
