# You think you’re in Switzerland? Belgium’s first private safe deposit vaults
Updated on September 26, 2026.
In 2012, when we announced that we were going to open private safe deposit vaults, entirely outside the banking system, here is what we were told, verbatim: « You are mad, it will never work in Belgium! You think you’re in Switzerland? »
We heard that sentence more than once. From fellow professionals, from bankers, from people who wished us well. At the time, it sounded like plain common sense. Fourteen years later, the safe deposit vaults of one of the country’s four major banks have closed, and ours are still open. This article tells that story, because it explains who we are better than any brochure.
2012: safe deposit boxes at a foundry, the idea that raised a smile
Let us go back to 2012. The house then operated under the name Gold Silver Bank, a private gold bank specialising in investment and tax advice, and that year it opened its foundry to private clients. Gold & Silver Company (GSC), which would grow out of that brand in 2017, did not yet exist, but the model was already in place: physical gold, directly, with no intermediary.
Now, a client who buys physical gold inevitably asks the next question: where to keep it? In 2012, the universal answer came in one word: the bank. Nearly every town had its branch, nearly every branch had its safe deposit vault, and the bank deposit box was a reflex as old as the savings account. Suggesting anything else occurred to no one.
That is exactly what we did: private safe deposit vaults, outside the banking system, run by a precious metals professional. In Belgium, no one had ever opened such a service to the public. This kind of service evoked Switzerland, its foundations and its free ports, not a town in Picardy Wallonia. Hence the sentence.
Why we believed in it anyway
The conviction did not come from a crystal ball; it came from the trade. A physical gold estate is best held outside the banking circuit: that is its very purpose. Entrusting the banking system with the custody of a metal bought precisely so as to depend on no one means rebuilding the very dependency one sought to undo. Our investor clients told us so every week, and they asked us for a serious alternative: secure, discreet, accessible.
And the signs were there for anyone willing to see them. The dematerialisation of securities had already emptied bank deposit boxes of their first historical contents: no more bearer securities to protect, hence fewer reasons to pay for a rental. Branches were beginning to merge, and every branch merger, mechanically, made one safe deposit vault disappear. Retail banking was beginning its long retreat from physical service. We simply took that movement seriously before it became obvious.
In our experience on the ground, the first few months even had something delightful about them: some visitors did not come to rent a box. They came to see with their own eyes that a safe deposit vault could exist somewhere other than a bank.
What the years made of the « madness »
Then history delivered its verdict, and it delivered it in writing. In January 2022, ING Belgium stopped accepting any new safe deposit box rental application. The closure of its vaults was then organised in phases: in the spring of 2023, the bank wrote to its clients asking them to make an appointment, empty their box and terminate their contract. By the end of 2023, it was over: one of the country’s four major banks no longer offered a single safe deposit box. In January 2023, it still had seventy thousand of them, rented at less than thirty percent.
The other major banks maintain the service, but the figures they publish tell the same story of erosion: one third of boxes occupied, rental volumes falling by ten to fifteen percent a year, vaults disappearing with every branch closure. The movement we had anticipated in 2012 has become a national reality, commented on throughout the Belgian press.
« You think you’re in Switzerland? » In hindsight, the question was a fair one. It simply turns out that it is Belgium that came round to our reading of the world, not the other way round: a country where the custody of physical valuables is leaving the banks, and where those who had prepared for it fourteen years earlier now welcome those no one was expecting.
The proof sleeps in paper archives
One trace of 2012 remains that we are particularly fond of: the local press of the time covered the opening of our safe deposit vaults. Paid-for titles, paper, articles never put online: in 2012, local news still lived at the newsstand, and nothing revolved around search engines the way it does today.
In 2026, research conducted in press archives to retrace the history of the house confirmed what we knew: no private safe deposit vault open to the public was found in Belgium before ours. This precedence is not a founder’s slogan; it is a matter of archive record. Trust is not declared. It is documented.
Fourteen years later: still here, still outside the banks
Today, these safe deposit vaults are still in service, at the same address, in Dottignies (Mouscron), within the Foundry-Refinery and its college of experts. Secure storage outside the banking system is one of the house’s eight trades, and the most direct legacy of the Gold Silver Bank era: investors who entrust us with significant transactions find the discretion and independence that no bank counter can offer them anymore.
The clients of 2012 are still with us. Those of the banks have joined us, often with the termination letter from their former safe deposit vault in hand. And when a visitor asks us whether our model has a future, we answer that we have already heard the question, back in 2012, phrased with a little less delicacy.
All practical information can be found on our secure safe deposit box rental page. And for the full history of the house, from the two family legacies to the college of experts, our Our Expertise page tells it in full.
Frequently asked questions about gold
Who opened the first private safe deposit vaults outside the banking system in Belgium?
Gold & Silver Company, which then operated under the Gold Silver Bank name, launched in 2012 the first private safe deposit vaults outside the banking system in Belgium, in Dottignies (Mouscron). The opening was covered by the local press of the time, in print, and archive research carried out in 2026 found no private safe deposit vault open to the public anywhere in the country before that one. This precedence also predates the first closures of bank safe deposit vaults to the public, which only gathered pace a decade later, when the major retail banks began withdrawing from the physical custody of valuables. What began in 2012 as an idea many considered eccentric has since become an established part of the Belgian landscape for the custody of physical assets.
Why did Belgian banks close or scale back their safe deposit vaults?
Three movements compounded one another. The dematerialisation of securities emptied deposit boxes of their first historical contents. The closure and merger of branches made the vaults disappear along with them. And the service, costly in space and staff, sat poorly with the simplification strategies of the major brands: ING Belgium stopped accepting new applications in January 2022 and closed all its safe deposit vaults by the end of 2023, asking its clients to come and empty their boxes. The occupancy rates published by the sector, often around one third of boxes in use, illustrate how far the economics of the traditional bank vault had deteriorated by then.
Do the safe deposit vaults of 2012 still exist?
Yes. The safe deposit vaults opened in 2012 are still in service, at the same address, outside the banking circuit, and secure storage is now one of the eight trades of Gold & Silver Company’s college of experts. The practical arrangements, including access conditions and rental terms, are detailed on the secure safe deposit box rental page of the website. Fourteen years after they first opened, these vaults continue to welcome both their original clients and a growing number of savers arriving from the banking sector, often following the closure of their former branch’s vault.