The Agricultural Bank of China plans to nearly double its number of domestic private bank branches over this year and next to 20, to become the country's most widespread private bank. 

The bank, which is famous for completing the world's largest initial public offering in 2010, last week announced the launch of its 12th private banking branch in Jiangsu, on China's East coast. Over the last year the Shanghai-based lender has built private banking divisions in municipalities including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Zhejiang and Guangdong. It will add another eight this year and next in regions including Hebei and Sichuan.

Since ABC listed $19.2 billion of shares in Hong Kong and Shanghai last July, it has made steps towards growing its private banking division. In April ABC partnered with Bank of Montreal to launch the cross-border financial services under private banking to service overseas clients. It has also added a hotline for its wealthiest customers and issued a so-called "exclusive diamond card" to private banking customers.

ABC has nearly 30,000 private banking clients and RMB 330 billion ($51 billion) in assets under management, as of the end of March. It is known as one of China's Big Four - along with Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.