For emerging markets China and India, everybody can gain access to gold, not only the already rich but also its hardworking middle class citizens.

In India, banks have ramped up lending to investors or individuals against the yellow metal, the Business Standard Daily said. Prompted by higher margins, banks expanded their respective portfolios as gold financing has become a secured form of lending.

In China, there are now at least over two million people who have opened gold accounts since 2010 with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) to buy and collect the yellow metal, Reuters reported.

The ICBC noted the skyrocket growth in the number of investors that signed up shows the country's massive appetite and demand for the precious metal.

India's HDFC Bank, its second-largest private sector lender, reported doubling its gold loan portfolio in the last 12 months spurred by investor demand for gold loan businesses.

Loans against gold are considered priority sector advances, thus making it attractive business for banks. Data from the Reserve Bank of India showed 18 out of 26 public sector banks, including five associate banks of State Bank of India, have missed their agricultural lending targets for 2010-11 as most have diverted to facilitating gold loans.

HDFC Bank, which entered the business only three years ago, have gained a significant market share among India's new-age private sector banks because of its gold loans.

Indian bankers said margins in the gold loan business are higher compared to other secured loan products. While non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) offer loans at 18 per cent to 24 per cent, most banks offer gold loans at 11 per cent to 15 per cent to attract borrowers. Banks lend only 60 per cent to 80 per cent of the value of the gold.

Meanwhile in China, ICBC's is just one of a diverse assortment of schemes devised by China's banking sector to entice and enable small investors an entry point into the gold market.

Investors buy as little as a gram a month through the accounts, initially a tiny quantity but once it adds up could turn into millions.

ICBC said that as of end of November, it has already drew 2.33 million investors, just 19 months after the launch, with a total of 22 tonnes of gold to back them, Reuters reported.

According to the World Gold Council, China accounted for 23 per cent of the world's total consumer physical gold demand in the first three quarters of 2011, 19 per cent up from 2010.

"In 2012, both Chinese investment and jewellery demand will retain growth, albeit at a lower pace," Albert Cheng, Managing Director of the WGC, Far East, said in Reuters.

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