Introduction to Hard Assets Alliance

The company was founded in Manhattan, United States. It was started in 2012 by a team of financial researchers. Hard Asset Alliance (HAA) works with the Gold Bullion International's (GBI) trading platform. Hard Assets Alliance's platform allows customers to invest in precious metals; physical gold, silver, palladium, and platinum.

GBI provides opportunities for private and institutional investors to buy and sell precious metals and store them in professional vaults. HAA was formerly a cooperating GBI Financial Advisor. However, in 2018, GBI's CEO (Chief Executive Officer) became the CEO of Hard Asset Alliance. The company audits precious metals regularly, and customers can request that their precious metals be delivered to them.

Hard Asset Alliance allows customers to transact precious metals through its SmartMetals™ Account. The company also offers a savings plan known as MetalStream through the Hard Assets Alliance app.

Currently, they have a client base of over 30,000 people and precious metals worth over $2.5 billion. They are one of the world's largest wealth managers. Although the company pays attention to clients in the United States, customers that are not in the United States can transact with the company through the SmartMetals Accounts. The company can also store precious metals for customers in New York, Singapore, London, Salt Lake City, Zurich, or Sydney.

As a United States customer, the minimum investment you can make through this company is $5,000. This minimum investment amount is the criteria for having your precious metals stored or shipped to you. To store your precious metals or ship them internationally, you will need a minimum investment of $10,000.

Furthermore, HAA helps customers to set up their precious metals IRA, and they sell IRA-eligible precious metals. The company also provides a free investment guide to its customers. The aim is to keep their clients informed about precious metals investments. The title of the investment guide is ‘Why Portfolios Perform Better Than Gold.’

Hard Assets Alliance Management Team

HAA does not provide any information about its management team. Moreover, you will not see any details about who runs the company on its LinkedIn profile.

Hard Assets Alliance Products and Services

Precious Metal IRAs

A precious metals IRA (Individual Retirement Account) offers investors tax advantage benefits on their precious metals investments. A precious metals IRA gives investors a tax-free or tax-deferred way to invest their money by buying precious metals.

HAA provides customers with a streamlined and secure process that helps them manage their precious metals IRA. All the clients need to do is open a precious metals IRA account with them.

The company also partners with Equity Trust Company. Equity Trust is a major leading equity company in the United States. It is highly revered in the industry and has a portfolio value of over $25 billion.

Rollover vs. Transfer

The transfer refers to moving money from one IRA or retirement plan to another IRA. In this case, the transfer will move funds from an eligible retirement plan, for example, 401k, to a precious metal IRA.

An indirect IRA rollover sends money directly to you as the account's owner. Both transfer plans and rollover are part of Hard Asset Alliance's services.

The company offers customers a wide variety of precious metal products in the following categories; gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. It also offers its clients a wide range of solutions, for example, opening different types of accounts for transacting precious metals, and storing these precious metals for you for a fee. 

Gold  

The company offers a wide range of gold bars in various weights. You can buy from as little as one ounce to as large as one kilogram. Some of the gold coins available in the company's catalog are;

• American Eagles
• South African Coins
• Canadian Coins
• American Buffalo Nickels

The starting price of HAA’s gold bar is $1000. The company also sells the Gold American Eagle–Monster Box. The coins are U.S. mint coins. At the time of writing this review the monster box was worth $ 931,204.60.

Silver 

The company's silver bars are larger than its gold bars. The silver bars weigh from 100 to 1000 ounces. Silver is one of the precious metals you should consider if you want to diversify or grow your portfolio. Here is why silver is a widely used metal in the tech industry. Most metallic components of smartphones and other personal computers are made of silver.

The constant demand for silver by these companies may lead to its scarcity as time progresses. The scarcity will lead to the price increase, taking a cue from the law of economics. Increased demand and low supply will lead to an increase in price. At the time of writing this reviewThe company also has a silver package called Silver 500 oz American Eagles – Monster. The starting price of this silver package at the time of this writing is $16,868. An investor can see these prices through the company's mobile app.

Platinum 

HAA also sells quality premium platinum with 99.95% purity. At the time of writing this review, customers could buy a Platinum 1 oz Bar for $929.46 from Hard Asset Alliance. You cannot buy platinum coins. You can only buy in ounces.

Palladium 

Customers cannot buy palladium in coins. Palladium is not very popular but is used in the automobile industry, so the demand is continuously increasing.

Hard Assets Alliance Costs and Fees

When we spoke to an HAA team member, she told us that “the structuring of HAA is a bit different. The company does not work as a dealer on its own. HAA's marketplace is a product of a coming together of different companies. Through these alliances, customers can access standard dealers, refiners, and even banks”.

When customers place a precious metals order, the alliance's various dealers will compete for the sale. The competition happens by lowering the prices of their metals. Each company wants the customer to buy from them. Virtual bidding will usually mean you get very competitive prices for any metals you wish to purchase. However, the bidding does not necessarily mean you will get the lowest price in the industry. Remember, the bidders are only competing amongst themselves in the marketplace. This is not a whole of the market reverse auction! Therefore, the lowest price will be based on other competitors' pricing in the HAA marketplace.

We have seen that the HAA has a competitive pricing structure, but how competitive is the pricing outside the HAA marketplace?

For this review, let's work with this example. Let us assume that one Credit Suisse 1oz gold bar is currently worth $2,073 in the HAA marketplace. This price is only competitive if you find the type of gold bar for around that amount elsewhere. For example, you find it for $2,030 on the official website of the U.S. Gold Bureau.

Using trustablegold.com, here is a list of the estimated markup price.

• 400 oz: 2.14%
• 1 kg: 2.47%
• 10 oz: 2.58%
• 1 oz: 3.16%

Looking at these markup prices, HAA is better with pricing than some of its competitors. However, you will not pay the specific worth of your precious metals. Therefore, you will need to hope that the value of the precious metals will increase if you want to make an ROI by selling through HAA's marketplace.

If you are buying precious metals to protect or increase your wealth, you must accept that you could lose money when you eventually choose to sell off your assets. Moreover, you will need to pay maintenance and storage fees all the while you hold your precious metals in your HAA account until you are ready to request delivery.

Customers might find low cost precious metals from other physical precious metals brokerages. However, the HAA marketplace helps you to compare precious metals prices from other HAA-affiliated dealers easily. Therefore, if you want to access more than one offer at once, the HAA marketplace may be a good place to start buying.

Hard Assets Alliance Types of Account

You need to verify your account when opening a new account with HAA. After verification, you can now proceed to fund your SmartMetals account. After you have verified your account, you can access the HAA precious metals marketplace. There are various accounts that HAA offers clients. These accounts are based on individual needs and investment goals.

• Retirement accounts
• Individual and joint personal accounts
• Corporate accounts
• Trust accounts
• UTMA accounts

What Makes Hard Assets Alliance Unique?

MetalSTREAM is an HAA investment feature that is not available anywhere else. The feature allows the company to automatically invest customers' money monthly in precious metals. However, the service is not free. You will pay a fee of $25 monthly to use the service. Then you will link your bank account to your SmartMetals account. After linking them, you will choose the amount you wish to invest every month.

If you want to maintain a particular portion of your wealth in precious metals, then this option is something you should try out. The process is so automated that you will not need to choose the precious metals to invest in at the end of every month when you get your paycheck.

Hard Assets Alliance Promotions and Offers

While conducting this review, the customer service person we contacted told us that the company is not offering promotions. If you are looking for reliable companies with promotions, you should invest in one of our top five recommended companies.

When writing this review, we found out that Goldco offers free silver worth $10,000 to investors opening new precious metals IRAs with them. American Hartford Gold also offers new investors up to 3 years of free precious metals storage.