Regal Assets, also called "Regal" or just "RA" in the business, is a focused company that offers just two basic services: gold IRAs and a newer cryptocurrency IRA. The latter is not the subject of this review, but we will mention it in passing.
The main thing to remember about RA is that for gold IRA clients, they sell bullion of the highest quality. That's essentially the only thing they focus on. Unlike many of their competitors who offer "collectible" and rare coins and so-called numismatic products, Regal sticks to its central mission and offers bullion-grade metals, specifically gold, silver, platinum, and palladium.
In the gold IRA industry, they are a long-haul survivor because they've been at it for more than a decade and have amassed thousands of reviews that are nearly universally positive. RA also offers a product called the "Regal IRA" that can include cryptocurrency, precious metals, or both in any combination. However, their gold IRA is by far the more popular offering.
5.0/5.0
Before investing in any company that claims to help you set up a gold-based IRA, it's imperative to do due diligence and find out everything you can about the organization. Our research team checked out dozens of websites, chat rooms, discussion forums, and other resources to put the following in-depth review together. The table of contents is below.
Regal Assets In-Depth Review: Contents
PROS
cons
Complaints & Ratings
Ratings and complaints against Regal Assets are a point of intense concern and interest for investors. It's noteworthy that the company has only logged a handful of negative comments and official complaints after being in business for more than a decade. That's a unique achievement. It's also important to know that on the Better Business Bureau website, the very few consumer complaints are all listed as "resolved," which in BBB lingo means that the customer was satisfied with the way Regal handled the complaint.
Ratings and complaints are often based on minor points like a one-day delayed delivery or a misunderstanding between a company rep and a customer about a small point of recordkeeping.
Products
Prospective investors and interested consumers should check the RA website for the latest and most detailed listing of bullion products at www.regalassets.com. However, as of mid-2022, they offered a wide variety of choices in four metals categories.
Weights range from the small end of 1 gram all the way up to a full kilogram. RA sells both bars and "coins," but don't be confused by that last term. "Coins" are not rare numismatic coins. RA definitely does not sell those. In this case, people in the bullion industry refer to "coins" as minted round ingots like the famous Krugerrand or the Austrian Philharmonic. And even though these rounds carry a legal denomination, like $10 or $50, no one in their right mind would use them as spendable currency because the bullion value is at least 100 times the imprinted value on the coin.
For gold and silver, which make up the preponderance of gold-backed IRA assets, Regal sells more than a half-dozen of the more popular varieties, including Austrian Philharmonics and Krugerrands, as noted above, along with Chinese Pandas, American Eagles, Canadian Maple Leafs, and more.
The company's offerings for platinum and palladium are more limited but include bars, Canadian Maple Leafs, American Eagles, and Australian Koalas.
The company's offerings for platinum and palladium are more limited but include bars, Canadian Maple Leafs, American Eagles, and Australian Koalas.
Reviews, Fees & Prices
Reviews
RA's online consumer reviews from multiple websites number well above 2,000 comments, nearly all of which are positive. It's usually wise to ignore Facebook likes for companies because those numbers are too easy to manipulate. However, you can get a decent idea about the overall review validity by looking at many of the larger and more reputable sites.
By that measure, Regal Assets scores quite well as it has almost entirely good reviews from verified customers, and it is mentioned in a positive light in chatrooms and discussion forums where people go to talk about investing.
Charges and Prices
Regal Assets has a flat structure for its fee-based charges. Frustratingly, like nearly all its competitors, it's impossible to find out the details about these charges without phoning the company and speaking with a rep. Online, you can get the info only by registering for one of their Regal Assets Startup Kits. To call, the number is 1.877.962.1133.
To cut directly to the chase and avoid doing either of those two things, simply check out the information as our team has reported it:
There's a yearly admin charge that RA waives for your initial year of $100. If you want segregated storage, you also get a first-year waiver, but after that, it costs you $150 annually for the segregation. The minimum IRA opening balance is $10,000, but there is no setup cost, which many of RA's competitors are happy to charge.
For non-IRA Regal accounts, there are zero charges for maintenance and storage. The company's annual charge for IRA customers is flat and doesn't go up when you add to an account or when an account grows in value. Essentially, if you opt for segregated storage, as most customers do, you're paying a flat $250 per year in fees, which is the industry average.
The Regal Assets Management Team and Company Summary
Management Team
As noted above, Regal is not transparent about its full management team. The website and other information resources only list the name of the founder and CEO, Tyler Gallagher, who started Regal in 2009. However, there is an abundance of information on him as well as on the company and its history.
Gallagher is the only person who has ever helmed RA and has brought it from humble beginnings into its present state as a member of the prestigious "Inc. 500" group. Currently, RA maintains operational offices in Dubai, Toronto, London, and Beverly Hills.
There are several published interviews with RA's founder in which he recounts a challenging past replete with homelessness and hardscrabble times before founding the company. With no industry connections or special help, he devoted himself fully to bringing the organization into existence.
As a recognized authority on alternative investments and related topics, Gallagher today authors numerous opinion and news stories about the industry, gold, metals, and other topics. His writing and interviews have appeared in dozens of top-ranked publications, including Forbes, RT TV network, and Thrive Global.
RA is a relatively large organization in the niche it occupies, with more than 50 full-time employees in its four global offices. While RA does not disclose the other members of the management team, it is fully within its legal rights to do so because it is not a publicly-held company. Thousands of privately-held firms, including giants like Dell, Mars, and Albertson's, do not have to list all their management information unless they wish to do so.
Company Summary and Fact Sheet
For investors who want a cheat sheet of essential facts about Regal Assets, the following bullet points convent the key information:
How To Get Started With a Regal Assets Gold IRA
Regal Assets' reps are experts at making the startup process as simple, fast, and secure as it can be. For people who want to open an IRA with Regal, they can either go to the company website and ask for a free startup kit and wait for a company rep to contact them by telephone or email. Or, you can call the toll-free number on the website and speak directly with a representative who will answer all your questions.
At that point, the Regal employee will take you through the complete signup procedure step by step. There's no guesswork or ambiguity. It's important to remember that all gold-backed IRAs are, legally speaking, self-directed accounts. It's up to the investor to decide what goes into the account at any time.
The Regal reps and the company's legal account custodians are happy to work with all new and established customers to help them choose which metals, and in what amounts, are a good match for the account. By federal law, for the IRA to be fully compliant with regulations, account holders cannot store the metals in their own homes. This point is sometimes misunderstood.
Note that you can ask for distribution of your metals at any time. However, if you are not yet of retirement age, requesting delivery will cause problems and can lead to fines by the government. Any metals taken out of an SDIRA before the retirement age of the account holder can trigger a stiff penalty from the IRS. It also means the metal removed in no loner IRA-eligible.
That's one reason Regal and its competitors are careful to use third-party custodians to monitor the metals, store them in a secure location, and keep all records. For clients who opt for segregated storage, the metals will be kept in a designated unit away from the assets of other depositors and customers. All Regal Assets customers can select their preferred storage location, whether in the US or in Singapore.
New clients typically choose to fund their accounts via a straight transfer from their existing IRA or with money from their bank that is not currently in a retirement account. It's easy to do a rollover from an existing IRA or even a 401(k) account directly into a Regal self-directed, gold-backed IRA. Rollovers incur no fees.
Many potential customers wonder how to deal with the paperwork complexities of a rollover or the opening of a brand new retirement account. Fortunately, the Regal team takes care of all the red tape and forms. New account holders can simply answer a few questions over the phone, with the Regal rep on the other end of the line, and get the entire application and funding process taken care of in a streamlined manner.
Why Choose a Gold-Backed IRA Over a Conventional One?
People choose IRAs for the tax advantages. You can deduct the full amount of an annual contribution from your income in most cases (always speak with your tax advisor to be certain about what you owe in taxes each year). However, traditional IRAs can only hold intangible assets like stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.
If you want to include tangible assets, like gold or silver, in an IRA, you must open a so-called "self-directed IRA," or SDIRA for short. Gold-backed IRAs are a type of SDIRA into which investors place various metals from the "precious" group: silver, gold, platinum, and palladium.
What's the advantage? Many investors don't trust the stock market to deliver regular, long-term returns. Others love stocks but want to diversify. They open a traditional IRA for stocks and a separate one for gold. It's legal to have as many IRAs as you want as long as you don't exceed the federal maximum annual contribution, which is $6,000 for most people but $7,000 if you are older than 49.
Other benefits, besides diversification, include potential growth and personal control. Millions of folks who choose gold or silver-backed IRAs do so because they realize that the growth in value of some metals is virtually unlimited. Or, they simply want to have more direct control over their retirement accounts by adding tangible assets into an SDIRA and managing it themselves.
Our Recommendation and Objective Determination
Regal Assets is a standout in their industry. Consumers and account holders hold them in high esteem based on what can be found on reputable, objective websites and elsewhere online. The company also compares favorably to all the major players in the segment of gold-backed IRA investing, like Goldco, Augusta Precious Metals, and Birch Gold Group.
What most impressed our research team was the fact that RA is focused on IRAs that are metals-backed by gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. They don't get into the complex and controversial world of numismatic, collectible coins, which often make sub-standard additions to IRAs. Another key trait about Regal is its proactive stance toward customer satisfaction.
Since 2009, they have struggled to meet or exceed clients' expectations. One form of proof of that trait is their efforts to resolve the few complaints that do materialize. In every case listed on the BBB website, Regal was able to deal with clients who needed help and resolve their situations to full satisfaction. That sort of thing is not common in many industries or even in the gold-backed IRA niche.
It's only logical to rate Regal Assets as one of the top three companies in the self-directed IRA industry. For investors who are set on diversifying their retirement accounts, Regal is a trustworthy choice that offers a vast menu of simple products and helps people get their accounts set up quickly.
Regal Assets FAQs
Our research team reviewed hundreds of questions asked by customers and prospective customers of gold IRAs, in particular questions they asked about Regal Assets. The following are the ones that most frequently appeared in forums, chat rooms, and precious metals websites.
By law, investors in self-directed IRAs that hold precious metals must have a third-party custodian to do all the paperwork, tax reporting, recordkeeping of withdrawals, etc. There is no way around this law, and it actually helps protect investors.
In almost every situation, account holders are able to receive distributions from their Regal gold IRAs as soon as they reach the age of 59 years and six months. As with many other IRA rules, this one is related to federal law and not to any guidelines set by Regal Assets.
There's no hard-and-fast rule about which metals to keep in a gold-backed IRA. Note that the term "gold-IRA" is, in fact, a slang term because people can put any precious metal into the account, including platinum, palladium, silver, or any combination of those four. However, it's a fact that the vast majority of investors prefer to use gold or silver most often.
Federal law allows assets in IRAs to grow tax-free. That means you leave the assets in the account until you retire, remove them, and pay your post-retirement tax rate on the withdrawals. For 99% of all working adults, their retirement-level tax bracket is much lower than when they were working. If you put money into an IRA while you are younger, you don't have to pay tax on it when you earn it, but only pay the tax when you reach retirement age.
Regal insures all shipments for full market value and delivers within a week after account holders make the request. They use UPS or FedEx as their preferred shippers. The account holder has no legal liability related to the shipment until they receive the physical shipment of their metals.
Though the time varies slightly from person to person, Regal Assets team members typically get all the paperwork, account setup, and metal deliveries completed within one or two weeks from the time a customer fills out an application and funds the account. A rollover means someone transfers a current IRA into a precious metals IRA.
RA uses only the most reliable and trusted storage facilities for metals. Regal stores in facilities in both the U.S. and Singapore. The official owner of the facilities is Brinks, Inc., one of the most trusted names in the financial security and storage industry for more than a century.
RA uses a reputable account custodian called New Directions IRA.
As noted elsewhere in this review, there are two minimums. One pertains to the gold IRAs, and it's $10,000. The other is related to the non-IRA accounts in which people store precious metals, and that minimum is $5,000.
Alternatives To Regal Assets: Goldco
Investors who are looking for a gold-backed IRA that suits their particular needs have a wide range of preferences and tastes when it comes to investing in precious metals. That's why we've included this section about alternatives.
Whether your priorities are focused on the age of a company, their fees, reviews, ratings and complaints, or anything else, you might like to shop around a bit and check out companies other than Regal Assets. Our top recommendation is Goldco and you can check them out on our Goldco review page