On 5 July 2023, the Financial Markets Standards Board (FMSB) published a spotlight review on data and transparency in precious metals markets.

This review is the third in a series of spotlight reviews by FMSB members that also cover precious metals market structure and post-trade.

This review focuses on:

• Benchmarking: The re-introduction of gold reference rate – through the proposed creation of a forward benchmark, which could improve transparency in the market and would evidence an ‘active and sizeable’ gold market.
• Transparency: Improving both point-of-trade transparency through greater adoption of electronic trading, and post-trade price transparency through publicly available historic transaction prices, should demonstrate the ‘ease and certainty’ of gold’s valuation, as well as the presence of an active, liquid market. Having sustained price transparency, where price data is published and accessible, could also demonstrate that gold has a low correlation with risky assets, as it has historically been shown to keep its value in times of market stress or crisis.
• Market surveillance: Robust market surveillance supports market integrity thereby increasing participant confidence in such markets.