Allocated Bullion Exchange (ABX) has today launched as the world’s first global institutional electronic exchange for allocated physical precious metals, which will provide market participants integrated, transparent, and secure access to local markets and global liquidity pools, said the company in a statement.

ABX migrates the institutional trade and storage of physical precious metals into the electronic environment, reducing the barriers to entry to the wholesale physical bullion market.

ABX’s open, efficient market with real-time price discovery and transparency is an innovative disruptor to existing methods of physical bullion trading, which are slow, inefficient, inaccessible and lack transparency, resulting in high costs and creating a disincentive for precious metals producers, traders and investors, said the company.

Through its online trading platform ‘MetalDesk’, ABX provides instant electronic global trading, price discovery, and clearing facilities to market participants worldwide, including all physical industry participants, wealth managers, brokerage platforms and investors.

ABX is a cutting edge, centrally cleared, transparent and cost-effective allocated exchange system and standard for the industry. The exchange presents precious metal market participants with a platform where they can safely and efficiently trade, deliver, store and monetise physical precious metal in 11 global locations.

ABX CEO Tom Coughlin said: “Our team has been working on this vision for more than five years now, so I am extremely proud to finally be introducing the exchange to the precious metals industry. At a time of high volatility in global markets and the resurgent interest in precious metals, the launch of ABX is expanding access, enhancing efficiency and raising transparency in a market that historically has been opaque.”

ABX is a membership-based, institutional exchange, offering trading, storage and delivery services for physical precious metals in one electronic environment, via its state-of-the-art technological solution, the MetalDesk trading platform. ABX offers a value proposition to market participants across the world including precious metal producers, refiners, intermediary broker-dealers, asset managers, institutional and private investors, manufacturers and jewellers.