The Dutch central bank has moved about 86 metric tons of gold from storage in the United States and Canada to the United Kingdom, citing rising geopolitical tensions and the need to strengthen its ability to mobilize its reserves during a crisis.
De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) said Wednesday that slightly more than one-quarter of its gold reserves held in New York and Ottawa were transferred to London between March and August. The gold is now stored at the Bank of England, one of the world’s major hubs for the storage and trading of monetary gold.
DNB said the relocation was primarily a contingency-planning measure designed to improve the liquidity and tradability of its gold holdings as geopolitical uncertainty increases.
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Gold stored at the Bank of England can meet international trading standards and is considered among the world’s most readily tradable forms of bullion, allowing it to be mobilized more directly if the central bank needs to raise liquidity or conduct transactions during a financial or geopolitical emergency.
By comparison, DNB said gold held in the United States and Canada could not be deployed as quickly or as directly in a crisis.
“With this relocation, we have improved the tradability of our gold reserves. We expect that we will never need to use them, but we do need to strengthen our resilience and preparedness,” DNB Governor Olaf Sleijpen said.
The decision comes as governments and central banks reassess the location and accessibility of strategic reserves against a backdrop of heightened geopolitical tensions, disruptions to global trade routes and growing concern over the resilience of the international financial system.
The move also comes during an exceptional rally in gold. The metal, traditionally viewed as a store of value during periods of inflation, financial stress and geopolitical instability, has risen sharply over the past year. Gold was recently trading around $4,429.61 an ounce, up nearly 1% in the latest session and roughly 25% higher than a year earlier.
The continuing tensions involving the United States and Iran, particularly around the strategically important Strait of Hormuz, have added another layer of uncertainty to global markets. The prolonged disruption to the waterway has affected energy supplies, inflation expectations, shipping costs and financial-market risk appetite.
For DNB, however, the gold transfer is less about making a directional bet on gold prices than ensuring that the asset can actually be used when needed.
Gold is valuable as a reserve asset not only because of its market price but also because it carries no direct counterparty risk and can potentially be exchanged for currencies or used as collateral. The physical location of bullion therefore becomes relevant when authorities are planning for extreme scenarios in which access to financial markets could be impaired.
The Netherlands is not alone in reassessing where its gold is held. The Banque de France moved 129 metric tons of gold from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York between July 2025 and January 2026. French central bank Governor François Villeroy de Galhau said at the time that the relocation was not politically motivated.
The Dutch move similarly does not necessarily signal a loss of confidence in the United States or Canada. Rather, it points to a broader effort by central banks to diversify the geographic location of their reserves and reduce dependence on any single storage or financial jurisdiction.
Following the latest transfer, DNB said its gold holdings are now more geographically balanced. London accounts for 32.1% of its gold reserves, while 30.8% is held at DNB’s cash center in Zeist in the Netherlands. New York and Ottawa each account for 18.5%.
The redistribution gives DNB a larger concentration of bullion in London, where the established gold market infrastructure provides access to a deep network of banks, trading counterparties, clearing arrangements and bullion-market participants.
The shift also illustrates how the role of gold in central-bank reserve management is changing. After decades in which some institutions reduced their gold holdings in favor of foreign-exchange assets, central banks have increasingly emphasized gold as a strategic reserve asset amid geopolitical fragmentation, sanctions risk, inflation uncertainty and concerns over the security of cross-border financial assets.
The issue is not simply whether gold prices will continue rising. It is whether central banks can access their reserves quickly under circumstances in which conventional financial channels become disrupted.
DNB’s decision therefore underpins a relatively practical form of geopolitical risk management: rather than predicting where the next crisis will emerge, the central bank is positioning part of its reserves so they can be converted into liquidity more efficiently if circumstances require it.