How to Evaluate a Gold IRA Custodian: Questions and Checks

This page lists questions to ask and checks to run. It does not rank or recommend any company, and it is not personal advice. For the role itself, see Gold IRA Custodians.

What does a Gold IRA custodian actually do?

A custodian is the institution that holds your IRA's assets. The CFTC says that "Metals in a self-directed IRA must be held by the IRA trustee or custodian" and that the custodian provides account holders with an IRA statement (CFTC advisory).

The SEC, NASAA and FINRA add a limit. Their investor alert says "Self-directed IRA custodians are only responsible for holding and administering the assets in the account," and that custodians do not evaluate the quality or legitimacy of investments or their promoters. So evaluating a custodian is separate from evaluating the dealer. The roles are explained in custodian vs dealer vs depository.

What should I check first?

Use this table as a checklist. The right-hand column says where the answer can be verified.

How do I confirm a custodian's regulatory status?

For a non-bank company, the test is whether it appears on the IRS list. The IRS says it "maintains a list of entities approved, under Treas. Reg. §1.408-2(e), to serve as nonbank trustees or custodians." When we opened the page on 2026-10-06 it linked to a PDF dated April 1, 2026, and the IRS says it updates the list as entities are added or removed. Search the PDF for the legal name, not a brand name. Custodian Requirements explains what the regulation (26 CFR 1.408-2) asks of applicants.

Two cautions from our reading:

• Appearing on the list shows the company was approved to act. The IRS page we read does not say that approval reflects anything beyond the regulation's requirements for applicants.
• We did not find an IRS page on how to check a bank's status for this purpose, so for a bank we suggest asking it to confirm in writing that it will act as the IRA custodian.

FINRA's BrokerCheck is described by FINRA as showing "employment history, certifications, licenses, and any violations for brokers and investment advisors." We did not confirm that a custodian of metals appears in them, so do not treat a missing result as meaningful either way. They are more useful for checking anyone who calls themselves an adviser or "IRA expert."

What fees should I ask about?

The CFTC says IRA custodians "also charge for their services" and that self-directed IRA fees are typically higher than those of directed IRAs. It also lists storage, insurance and administrative fees among costs beyond the metal itself. Its general advice is to ask for "all fees, costs, commissions, and agreed retail price in writing BEFORE signing a sales agreement or turning over any money" (CFTC advisory). The CFTC's Precious Metals Frauds page adds that these accounts come with "complicated tax rules, monthly administrative fees, and handling and storage charges."

A useful written fee schedule answers these questions:

• Is there a setup or account-opening fee?
• Is there an annual or monthly administrative fee, and does it change with account size?
• What does storage cost, and is it a flat amount or based on value or weight?
• Is there a fee to buy, to sell, to ship metal out, or to transfer or close the account?
• Which fees are billed separately, and which come out of the account?

Dealer markups and spreads are a different layer of cost from custodian fees; see dealer premiums and markups and Gold IRA fees. Comparing a custodian's fee schedule with another's only works if both are on the same basis, so ask for examples at your expected account size.

How do I ask about storage and depositories?

IRA metal is meant to be held by the trustee or custodian, not by you; the reasons are in Home Storage Gold IRA. Ask the custodian:

• Which depository or depositories can it use, and can you see the depository's own terms?
• Whether storage is in a separate account for you or pooled with other customers' metal (the words used vary by company, so ask for the contract language).
• Who pays for insurance, and what the account agreement says it covers.
• How to check your statement against what you bought. The CFTC warns that "Some fraudulent dealers have charged storage and insurance fees for metal that never existed" and says to review IRA statements to confirm you received what you bought and were not overcharged.

The CFTC lists, among precious-metals fraud tactics, that some dealers "Charged customers extra to store bullion in far-away vaults that didn't exist" (Precious Metals Frauds). We found no IRS rule on whether pooled or separate storage matters for tax purposes, so if that is important to you, ask a tax professional.

How can I tell whether service and statements are adequate?

These are checks you can run before opening an account:

1. Ask for a sample statement and read what it lists.
2. Ask how you will be told about fees, and whether you can see a transaction history online or only by mail.
3. Ask how long processing steps such as transfers, sales or distributions usually take, and get the answer in writing.
4. Ask how your questions will be answered: by phone, email or portal, and during which hours.
5. Ask how tax forms such as IRA tax forms are delivered.

We cannot give benchmark answers, because we found no regulator source that sets them. Judge the answers against the written terms you are given.

What if the dealer says I must use a particular custodian?

The investor alert says self-directed IRA custodians "DO NOT evaluate the quality or legitimacy of any investment in the self-directed IRA or its promoters," and "Using a legitimate custodian to buy an investment DOES NOT make that investment legitimate" (investor alert). If a salesperson steers you to a custodian, you can still run every check above on that custodian yourself, and run separate checks on the dealer using warning signs of Gold IRA scams. A browsable list is planned in our Gold IRA Custodian Directory.

Questions to bring to a professional

A tax attorney, CPA or fee-only financial planner can help with questions that depend on your situation: whether a rollover or transfer makes sense, how the account agreement treats disputes, and tax reporting. This page is general education only.