STANDARD Bank’s clients have found a new home for safeguarding their prized possessions with the sale of the bank’s safe custody business to IBV International Vaults, the global vault facilities provider.
As part of the deal, IBV will take over Standard Bank’s book of over 20 000 clients, as well as management of its seven private safety deposit vault facilities across the country, a statement from IBV said yesterday.
Responsible for launching South Africa’s first secure vault in Umhlanga in 2005, IBV had experienced rapid growth over the years, with branches in Sandton, Zurich, and London, and new premises soon to open in Dubai.
Its list of clients not only includes security-conscious middle-income earners, but also the who’s who of millionaires, billionaires, celebrities, and even corporates.
IBV’s founder and CEO Ashok Sewnarai said the company intended to renovate and refurbish the Standard Bank branches in accordance with best-in-class international vault standards, following a similar blueprint to its successful billionaires-only vault in the affluent region of Mayfair in London purchased from Barclays bank.
“In our experience, national and international banks tend to offer strong rooms rather than internationally rated vaults, which have much higher requirements in terms of physical safety barriers, high-tech electronic systems, and alarm features.
“So, as banks turn to digitised solutions and reduce their physical branch presence, we’ve increasingly become the industry’s partner of choice for vault-add services,” he said.
“We … will be refitting the former Standard Bank branches with multi-tiered, designer security measures including steel-lined walls, armoured vault doors, and onsite tactical teams,” he said.
While the contents of safety deposit boxes were kept confidential, he said most customers store items such as gold bars or physical bullion, designer jewellery, diamonds, vintage and collector watches, heirlooms, and personal documents. Encrypted USBs had also become increasingly popular in recent years as an option for securely storing cryptocurrencies. -
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