The Bank of China (BOC)'s private banking clients will mushroom from several hundred to more than 1,000 in upcoming two years, according to Huang Jinlao, marketing director of Personal Banking Department of Bank of China.

This translates into a total amount of 10 billion yuan (US$1.35 billion) wealth from the private banking clients to be managed by the country's second-largest lender, he said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.

It is the first Chinese-funded bank to provide domestic private banking services since March 28, 2007 targeting those with liquid financial assets above US$1 million, after Citibank, Standard Chartered and other leading foreign-funded banks, striving to get a bigger share of the country's increasingly large wealth management market.