LBMA opened a public consultation on Responsible Gold Guidance version 10 on 10 June 2026, with responses closing on 10 July 2026 and a second consultation due in Q4 2026. The consultation draft renames Recycled Gold to Secondary Gold, recognises Investment Gold as a distinct type of material with its own due diligence requirements, and folds in the ASM Toolkit, the Disclosure Guidance and the Approved Assurance Provider Toolkit. RGG10 is due to be published in December 2026 and sets the responsible sourcing requirements for all Good Delivery List refiners from 1 January 2027, with implementation running to 31 December 2027 and the first audits against it due for the year ending 31 December 2027.
An Investment Gold Bar is defined in the draft as a cast or minted bar of 995 purity or higher in a weight and form accepted by the bullion market, with 400 toz, 1 kg, 500 g, 250 g, 100 g and 50 g among the listed typical weights and rudimentary bars excluded. The Minimum Provenance Point for such a bar produced by a Good Delivery List refiner is the country of that refinery; for one produced by an Intermediate Refiner it is every country from which that refiner sources feedstock. The documentation a holder can produce is what the refinery’s traceability record then has to contain: per lot, proof of origin, formal invoices, a packing list, shipping and transport documents, official export and import forms, customs documentation, a government-issued certificate of origin where one exists, and a unique reference number, retained for at least five years after the refiner’s reporting year ends. Bars held in bullion bank, central bank, exchange or refinery vaults with a Verifiable Date before 1 January 2012 count as Grandfathered Stocks, for which the refiner verifies the date from physical date stamps or inventory lists and is not required to determine origin. Where Investment Gold is classed as high inherent risk — non-GDL bars from Intermediate Refiners with high-risk supply chains — the draft requires periodic independent assurance on that Intermediate Refiner, an on-site visit at the producing facility where the material is sourced directly, and a visit to the counterparty’s own location where it arrives through a trader. A refiner’s Compliance Report and its annual Country of Origin Annex are both public and both carry a report from an LBMA Approved Assurance Provider, with limited assurance on the Annex. Those engagements move to ISSA 5000, which replaces ISAE 3000 for reporting years beginning 1 January 2027.
RGG9 governs refiner assurance until RGG10 is published in December 2026, and the consultation text can change before then. Bar specification and accreditation to the Good Delivery List sit with the Good Delivery Rules, which this consultation does not open.