Gold Bullion International, a provider of physical precious metals to the wealth management industry, has partnered with Entrust Group to leverage the latter firm’s custodial services and create an online physical precious metals IRA platform.

By registering for an account via select GBI partners, individual investors can buy, sell and store physical precious metals and allocate them within an IRA.

The distribution of the platform will be done exclusively through a set of pre-approved partners in order to white label the offering. GBI said it is in “active discussions” to bring in more partners, including both precious metals dealers and IRA specialists.

“The IRA platform is a natural extension of our core business - streamlining the process to allow investors to create gold and other precious metal IRAs safely, easily and at low cost,” said Steven Feldman, co-founder and chief executive of GBI. “Previously, investors were forced to fill out numerous paper forms, deal with multiple vendors, potentially wait 30-45 days to open an account and pay very high fees upfront.”

At present, bars and coins of gold, silver, platinum and palladium included in an IRA can be stored in New York and Salt Lake City vaults.

“Our IRA customers recognize that physical gold is the perfect retirement investment," added Savneet Singh, co-founder and president of GBI. “Gold has been around for 5000 years as a store of value and investors know that it will be available to them and valuable when they retire. That is not something you say about any other asset.”