Three separate companies touch the money in a gold IRA, and only two of them answer to a regulator. The custodian holds the account and must be a bank, a trust company, or a non-bank trustee approved by the IRS. The depository that stores the metal is an audited, insured facility. The dealer in the middle, the company whose advertisement you saw and whose salesperson you spoke to, generally sits outside that supervision entirely.
That is not an accusation against any particular firm. It is the architecture of the industry, and it explains almost everything readers find strange about it: why prices are never published, why spreads vary so widely between dealers, and why an A+ rating from a review bureau is the strongest credential most dealers can put on a page.
Three Companies Touch Your Money and Only Two Are Supervised
A gold IRA is not one company doing three jobs, even when the marketing makes it look that way. The split between custodian, dealer and depository determines who is accountable for what.
Your money goes from your old retirement plan to the custodian. The custodian pays the dealer for the metal you selected. The dealer ships the metal to the depository, which stores it in your account name. The dealer never holds your retirement funds and never holds your metal for long. What the dealer does control is the one number nobody else checks: the price you paid.
What Custodian and Depository Regulation Actually Covers
A self-directed IRA custodian must qualify as a trustee under the Internal Revenue Code. That means either a bank or trust company, supervised by state or federal banking regulators depending on its charter, or a non-bank entity that has applied to the IRS and demonstrated the fiduciary experience, capital, recordkeeping systems and audit arrangements the regulations require. The IRS keeps a list of approved non-bank trustees, and Publication 590-A sets out the trustee requirement in plain terms.
That approval is real, and it is narrow. It covers custody, recordkeeping and reporting: that the metal is titled to your IRA, that your annual valuation is filed, that distributions are reported correctly. It says nothing whatsoever about whether the coins in the account were fairly priced when you bought them.
Depositories are the most conventionally regulated link in the chain. The major ones carry all-risk insurance, publish audit arrangements, and segregate or commingle holdings according to the account terms you chose. Here too the coverage is narrower than people assume. Depository insurance protects against loss, theft and damage to the metal. It does not protect the value of the metal, and it is not deposit insurance, which is a separate confusion covered in whether gold IRAs are FDIC insured.
The Dealer Gap, No Licence and No Fiduciary Duty
Physical bullion sold outright for an IRA is a commodity, not a security. Almost every consequence follows from that one classification.
There is no SEC registration, because the SEC regulates securities. There is no FINRA membership, because FINRA oversees brokerage firms. There is no fiduciary duty and no suitability rule, so the salesperson recommending that you move $80,000 out of a 401(k) is not required to conclude that doing so is in your interest, and does not have to hold a licence to make the recommendation. There is no rule compelling disclosure of the markup, which is why you have to ask for it in dollars rather than hope to find it in a document.
There is also no regulator setting the commission structure, and commissions here are earned on the spread rather than on a published fee. That is the mechanism behind the pressure some readers describe, and it is worth understanding on its own: how gold IRA salespeople get paid explains where the money in a sale actually comes from.
One further gap catches people out. In a joint alert, the SEC, FINRA and the North American Securities Administrators Association warned that custodians of self-directed IRAs typically do not investigate the assets held in the account or the background of whoever promoted them. Having an IRS-approved custodian on your paperwork is not a vetting of the dealer who sold you the coins.
Which Agency Handles What When Something Goes Wrong
Oversight is not absent. It is scattered, and it is mostly reactive rather than preventative.
- The CFTC pursues fraud in certain commodity transactions, including leveraged retail metals deals. In March 2024 it issued a joint warning with FINRA and NASAA aimed specifically at retirees being sold overpriced metals, and it notes that it has brought cases over the past decade alleging fraudulent dealers collectively sold more than $500 million of overpriced metal. Its bulletin on ten things to ask before buying physical metals is the single most useful free document in this field.
- The FTC covers deceptive advertising, which is the hook for misleading claims about returns, government confiscation or fake celebrity endorsements.
- State attorneys general and state securities or consumer protection divisions do much of the real enforcement. A 2020 action against two metals dealers, brought jointly by the CFTC and thirty state authorities, concerned an alleged $185 million scheme aimed at elderly investors.
- The Telephone Consumer Protection Act governs telemarketing conduct, which is the angle that applies when the problem is repeated unsolicited calls rather than the price itself.
- Banking regulators and the IRS cover the custodian, as above, and nobody else in the chain.
Where you complain depends on which of those the conduct falls under, and filing a complaint against a gold IRA company walks through the choice.
The Verification Checklist to Run Before You Wire
Since nobody is checking the price on your behalf, the checking falls to you. It takes about twenty minutes.
- Confirm the custodian independently. Ask which custodian will hold the account, then verify it against the IRS list of approved non-bank trustees or the relevant banking regulator, rather than taking the dealer word for it.
- Search the dealer name in state records. Attorney general actions, state consumer protection filings and civil court dockets are public. Checking a gold IRA company lawsuit and regulatory history lists the databases worth searching and the order to search them in.
- Get the spread in dollars, in writing. Not a percentage, not a range, and not a promise that the pricing is competitive. A specific dollar figure on the specific order.
- Get a buyback quote on the same product. Ask what the company paid on buybacks of that exact coin or bar last quarter. The gap between the two numbers is your real cost.
- Compare the all-in first year cost across dealers. Setup, storage, maintenance and spread together. Our comparison of the major gold IRA companies covers the published fee schedules; only the dealer can tell you the spread. For a head-to-head on two of the largest, see Goldco vs American Hartford Gold, or the standalone Goldco review.
None of this makes a gold IRA a bad account. Plenty of them are opened at fair prices with sound custodians. It does mean the safeguards you are used to, the ones that quietly sit behind a brokerage account, are not there, and the questions in what to ask a gold IRA company before you sign are doing that job instead.
Common Questions About Gold IRA Regulation
Are gold IRA companies regulated?
Partly. The custodian and the depository are regulated financial institutions. The dealer that sells you the metal generally is not, because physical bullion is a commodity rather than a security, so no federal licensing or fiduciary regime applies to the sale.
Does the SEC regulate gold IRA companies?
Not the dealer. The SEC regulates securities, and outright purchases of physical metal are not securities. A firm might come under SEC oversight for other activities it conducts, but that would not extend to its metals sales.
Are gold IRA salespeople licensed financial advisers?
Generally no. Selling physical bullion does not require an investment adviser or broker licence, and no suitability or fiduciary standard applies. Titles like specialist or account executive are job descriptions, not credentials.
What does IRS-approved actually mean for a gold IRA custodian?
It means the entity has satisfied the IRS that it can act as a trustee: adequate capital, fiduciary experience, recordkeeping and audits. It is a statement about custody competence. It is not an endorsement of the custodian, and it says nothing at all about the dealer.
Does the CFTC regulate precious metals dealers?
The CFTC has jurisdiction over fraud in certain commodity transactions and over leveraged retail metals deals, and it has brought numerous enforcement cases against fraudulent dealers. It does not license dealers, supervise their pricing or examine them routinely.
Are gold IRA dealers required to disclose their markup?
No rule compels it. Some will tell you the figure if you ask directly and in writing. A refusal to give a specific dollar amount on a specific order is itself an answer.
Is my gold IRA insured or protected like a bank account?
No. Depository insurance covers physical loss, theft and damage to the metal. There is no FDIC coverage and no SIPC coverage, and nothing protects you against having overpaid or against the gold price falling.
Who do I report a gold IRA company to?
It depends on the conduct: the CFTC for fraud in the metals transaction, the FTC for deceptive advertising, your state attorney general or securities division for most other disputes, and the custodian own complaints process for administrative errors on the account.
This article is educational and is not legal or tax advice. Regulatory responsibilities can change, and the position described here reflects the framework as it stood in September 2026.
