Hard Assets Alliance Review

Disclosure: Some of the links in this article are from sponsors. The list below is an honest review gathered from thorough research, experience, and consumer-based feedback. 

The precious metals industry isn’t highly regulated which makes it important to find a trustworthy company that has a proven track record. Buying precious metals isn’t as easy as it may seem.

Many companies have complex processes in order to sell you gold or other metals and investors end up paying much more than they have to.

There are schemes these companies use to mark up the metals and then tack on hidden fees. Hard Assets Alliance was created to counteract this.

However, after reading many of their complaints, it seems there are hidden fees and poor customer service.

The point of investing in precious metals is to have security and to be able to liquidate it when necessary. Many companies make it very difficult to get your hands on your gold and actually sell it for cash.

About Hard Assets Alliance

The company was built by investment professionals in 2012 with over a decade of experience who wanted to make investing in precious metals as easy and secure as investing in stocks and bonds.

It is an online marketplace that allows you to buy, sell, and trade real physical gold easily. You get access to the platform and have 24/7 access. You can buy, sell, or trade your holdings at any time. They use the white label platform of GBI (Gold Bullion International).

The CEO of Gold Bullion International is apparently also the CEO of Hard Assets Alliance, but we had to dig to find that out. It’s not on their website and we find it a bit odd.

HAA is supposed to be a more transparent way to invest in gold because you can log on to your account at any time and get access to your holdings. You can download statements and see where you stand. They claim ease of use for buying and trading, however there have been complaints about withdrawals.

They claim you have total digital access and true ownership of your metals. They store 100% real physical metals on your behalf in the most secure third-party vaults in the world, and they deliver globally. The secure vaults include Brinks, Loomis, and Malca-Amit.

It’s not just a piece of paper that you hold, it’s total transparency. This counteracts the compromises you have to make with gold ETFS and the gold bar schemes.

Types of Accounts

Standard Account

Hard Assets Alliance has many different ways you can invest in gold and other metals. You can have a standard account where you can buy bullion quickly and easily. This is their most popular plan which allows you to take delivery or take profits at any time. They also deliver internationally. They hold over $2.5 Billion for over 30,000 investors.

Precious Metals IRA

An IRA has tax advantages and you can hold physical gold and other precious metals in your retirement account. You save money on taxes and you hedge against other investments you have. It also diversifies your investments, and protects against inflation, currency devaluation, and much more.

The custodian HAA uses is Equity Trust. They are integrated in the online platform so you don’t have to go looking for a gold IRA custodian. Equity Trust secures over $25 Billion for IRA investors.

The types of Precious Metal IRAs HAA offers are a Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, Sep IRA, and Simple IRA. You can transfer cash from an existing IRA, rollover your account into a Precious Metals IRA, or make an annual contribution.

There are much better gold IRA companies out there which you can find on our top list.

Automatic Investments (Dollar Cost Averaging)

A unique service they have is their MetalStream Automatic Investments. Using this service, you can automatically purchase physical bullion so that you dollar cost average your investment. This is the most effective way to invest because you take advantage of price changes. Warren Buffet loves this way of investing and recommends it highly.

With their platform you can set up automatic monthly purchases of bullion and once you accumulate a coin or a bar, they’ll automatically move it into a vault at no additional cost.

This allows you the benefits of averaging purchase price without sacrificing the advantages of holding full coins and bars. Once you accumulate full coins and bars, you’ll have paid a lower price for them than if you had purchased them at once.

You can start and stop any time you want. They claim to have no extra fees and charges. You can invest with as low as $25 a month.

Business Accounts (Corporate Treasury)

If you want to invest in precious metals with your business account, you can also do this through Hard Assets Alliance. They offer a secure storage account, and the platform allows you to purchase precious metals as a first class company asset. Business types supported are LLCs, S-corporations, C-corporations, sole proprietors, partnerships and more.

Estate and Trust

With estate and gifting solutions, you can protect the next generation secure wealth by investing in precious metals. This includes accounts for trusts, UTMAs, and holding companies. When the beneficiary needs access to the assets, they can be sold or delivered with ease.

Until then, they secure the metals with their vault partner. This provides great flexibility whether you have a trust, a company, or simply want to gift precious metals to your young family members.

Metals Offered

You can purchase gold, silver, and platinum with the platform. You can purchase coins or bars and have them in a secure storage or have them delivered. They use the world’s most secure vaults and you can have the metals delivered whenever you like.

The storage rates are the same for all vaults. 0.7% per year of the average daily asset value of gold, platinum, and palladium. 0.8% for silver or lower for higher volume accounts.

The minimum is $5/month per account which is waived if MetalStream is activated. The storage is billed quarterly.

Customers have complained that the fees are more complex than this and you may not end up paying what you think. Apparently, it’s difficult to get in contact with customer service and they are not very helpful.

The Difference

There are countless places to buy precious metals online. But not all companies are transparent. Because Hard Assets Alliance is not a dealer, they claim to be fully transparent because it is built for investors.

They bring dealers, refiners, and banks to their marketplace which all have to bid to sell or buy your metals, which makes your price lower if you buy and higher if you sell. They have to bid against one another to earn your business. This is supposed to provide better availability and prices on precious metals.

However, you’re at the mercy of the bidders and other companies have a standard pricing that ends up being better.

The marketplace allows investors to easily buy metals, see their account value, and do with it what they please in an instant. With other companies you have to fill out paperwork and speak to someone on the phone who’s going to try to convince you not to sell. They’ll try to convince you to buy more.

Because Hard Assets Alliance isn’t a dealer, they don’t care if you buy more gold. They’re just as happy if you sell it, because they have sellers on their bidding for you metals and they make a commission no matter what.

They’ve removed themselves of any incentives for you to make certain buying decisions which makes them trustworthy and totally unique.

When you purchase precious metals with other companies, you end up buying much more than market price. That defeats the purpose of market prices and leaves you feeling robbed. With Hard Assets Alliance, you get the closest price to market prices, and depending on who’s bidding, you may even get more than market price for your metals, or pay lower than market price to purchase them.

Why Invest in Precious Metals?

The bottom line is that investors who own gold have higher overall returns than those who don’t. It’s one of the best performing assets in the past century outperforming stocks and bonds.

So why do people focus so much on stocks and bonds? Because there was a huge push in the 80’s and 90’s with marketing and promoting stocks and bonds because the profit was so high for the companies, and the commissions were ridiculous.

Many people cold called to sell these stocks and bonds because they made such a high markup. They could make more money buying selling stocks and bonds instead of gold. They weren’t interested in what would actually be the best for people, they cared about what would make them the most money.

Television ads, and News companies worked together to push stocks and bonds and that’s what made people think it was such a good investment. There are entire networks and channels dedicated to stock prices and bond prices because there’s so much money to be made.

But it’s not the best investment. Sure, having stocks and bonds is a good part of any diversified portfolio. But to think they are going to outperform gold is just not true. It’s propaganda.

Complaints and Reviews

HAA has quite a few complaints. The first complaint and something we found to be odd is there is no face to the company. There is no CEO to be found that represents the company and it’s hard to find out who is involved.

Many customers have expressed difficulty in withdrawing their funds and getting in contact with customer service.

Others have complained that the prices you pay are much higher than with other companies. They also have hidden fees they charge.

Several customers have complained that when they try to withdraw funds, they are told the transfers are approved and will take a few days. It ends up being weeks and when they reach out, they are told it was cancelled.

On TrustPilot they have a rating of 4.6 out of 5 which is good. The concerning part are the negative reviews. However, they do have a good amount of positive reviews. This should be taken with a grain of salt.

On the Better Business Bureau they have a 1 out of 5 with just 2 reviews.

Final Thoughts

Investing in precious metals is the best thing you can do right now with hyperinflation. The Federal Reserve is very slowly rising interest rates so there is time to get in. There is going to be a serious crash of the economy, stocks, and real estate.

People are going to rush to gold because it’s a real asset with utility that will never be worthless and has been a safe haven for savings for centuries.

Don’t just buy gold with any company. Find a company that is trustworthy and transparent. We’ve compiled a list of the 5 best gold investment companies which we’ve rigorously tested.