Certis Cisco Safe Deposit Boxes, Taxes & Singapore

Singapore is undoubtedly one of the greatest success stories of the last 50 years. With virtually no crime, clean air, some of the most educated workforce in the world, very low taxes, consistent budget surpluses, a self-funding retirement system and huge national reserves this country is a shining example of what good government can achieve.

With no natural resources Singapore success is due entirely to hard work and a pragmatic assessment of Singapore’s strengths and weaknesses in the global economy. Today this tiny city state has the world’s second largest airline, the world’s busiest container port, some of the largest oil refineries (located offshore on a man made island dedicated to refineries), huge research, financial and commercial centres and still manages to be known as “the garden city” due to the many parks and trees that line the roads. The primary language is English and Singapore’s lack of corruption and transparent legal system has made it the favoured location for multinational companies in this part of the world.

If you want to get a good understanding of what makes Singapore so special read “From Third World to First : The Singapore Story” written by the prime minister who literally built modern Singapore “Lee Kuan Yew” whose mantra is “I want to be correct, not politically correct”. This book as practical instruction manual on how to build a successful city state and it explains how Singapore manages to achieve more with a 7% income tax than most other countries who have 45%+ income taxes while still taking excellent care of its residents and a very strong military. I relocated to Singapore after reading this book.

So as the Western world is going from crisis to crisis, Singapore recognized that it is in a great position to offer secure, tax free trading and storage services of precious metals and announced that It will exempt physical precious metals from the 7% GST tax, furthermore Singapore has not capital gains tax.

However, not all bullion products will be exempted. To qualify, gold must be 99.5% pure or higher (silver must be of .999 grade) which includes many investment coins such as the Canadian maple leaf coins but excludes the lower purity 91.67% American eagle gold coins and South African Krugerrands. Bullion bars on the other hand must identified with an assay mark from a current or past LBMA approved refiner to qualify for tax exemption. You can find more details and a list of tax status by products at SINGAPORE PRECIOUS METALS & GST - OVERVIEW.

So from October 1st onwards you could import your gold bullion to Singapore and store it directly in a safe deposit box as a highly anonymous “Do It Yourself” (DIY) storage option. Safe deposit boxes offer the most privacy at a moderate price but have drawbacks as their content is not insured (since content is unknown to the provider) and require you to be physically present to place or remove bullion.

If you are interested in such a storage option your best bet in Singapore are safe deposit boxes from Certis Cisco which operates over 40,000 such boxes. Certis Cisco is the largest armed security company in Singapore, handles most cash logistics for banks and also acts as an auxiliary police force.

Certis Cisco has been in the local news recently when it’s perfect track record was put in question by a customer, Mr. Tham, who filed a police report stating that certain jewellery in his safe deposit box had disappeared. This incident was widely publicized in Singapore causing a flood of other concerned customers to check the contents of their safe deposit boxes spawning a number of additional claims.

The Singapore Police opened a case and together with Mr. Tham inspected his safe deposit box only to find that the allegedly lost jewellery was still in the box. Mr. Tham quickly claimed that somebody must have opened his box and retuned the jewellery. Certis Cisco submitted to a third party inspection of their procedures and pointed out that the only way for them to open such a box without the customer’s key is to drill the box open which would obviously compromise the box’s integrity. You can read more about their security features at http://www.certissecurity.com/safedeposit/.

The police report on Mr. Tham’s case has not been released yet but it seems likely that Mr.Tham might not have checked his box thoroughly enough before he filed the police report and brought this case to the media. There really is not much Certis Cisco can do in such cases as the contents of the boxes are private and it is up to the customer to keep track of what is kept in the box.

Certis Cisco as a safe deposit box provider, has to balance customer privacy versus access security and this incident will shift the balance toward more security. So although CCTV cameras and guards already control access to the safe deposit boxes additional cameras will likely be installed to monitor safe deposit boxes directly 24/7. Customers will still have the option to take their boxes to non-monitored private viewing rooms within the secured safe deposit boxes area.

In the meantime as Mr. Tham’s case progresses almost all other missing item claims have been withdrawn as initially panicked customers realized that they or their spouse had already taken the allegedly missing items out or simply forgot what they had placed inside the box over the years. Interestingly, record numbers of new safe deposit customers are now flocking to the storage facility which is a great indicator that the media and police scrutiny have ultimately strengthened Certis Cisco’s reputation and appeal.

Storing bullion requires a strong counterparty and Certis Cisco maintains an excellent track record among their customers and, most importantly, is in what is probably the world’s safest jurisdiction.

Best Regards from Singapore

Gregor Gregersen
Founder, Silver Bullion Pte Ltd