Personally I don't get the interest vaulting with a private company who have practically no transparency vs vaulting with a public company (like a bank) who have reporting requirements and reasonably open books. Is the fear that legislation one day treats asset seizure differently depending on whether or not the vault is managed/owned by a bank? If so, what factors are going into that risk analysis? The vault at BankSA King William Street in Adelaide is quite impressive.
A number of years ago my siblings and I sold an inherited property in Cyprus for €200,000. It took about 6 months to bring the money into Australia in instalments. A few months later they had the bail-in. We could easily have lost have our money. Similarly had we had metal in the bank’s vaults it would have taken months to access it. That is my argument against bank vaults but I take your point re accountability. So I guess there are no private vaults in Adelaide.
I can understand hesitancy given your personal experience, but try and zoom out. What is more likely in Australia between these two scenarios: Australia's foreign debt becomes such a hurdle that the government legislates some sort of bank deposit bail-in necessitating the closure of banks A private vault operator takes off with the contents of clients' deposit boxes (and isn't insured as a result of the inside job) I personally think the latter poses a much more significant risk, not only because it's more likely, but because it presents risk of permanent loss vs temporary access restriction. I am not aware of any private vaults in Adelaide. AET is part of a public company that isn't a bank (but still in the financial services industry), which may be worth consideration (don't have any personal experience with their service though): https://www.aetlimited.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/227010/AET-Safe-Deposit-Service.pdf