I'm sorry, that should have been "private banking service". Damn those tiny little keys.

Imagethief was put into a foul mood by the Bank of China today. First I spent an hour in line waiting for my number to be called while my bladder slowly filled with Diet Coke. During one epic twenty minute stretch not one window opened up. Then, when I number was called, I spent only fifteen seconds at the counter. This was not because the Bank of China handled my transaction with breathtaking speed. It was because they couldn't help with my transaction at all.

It turns out that I had made a fundamental mistake. I had assumed the Bank of China was, well, the Bank of China.

Wrong.

In fact, the Bank of China is a nationwide collection of municipal banks that have no integration and are incapable of handling any complex business for customers who originate from other cities. Thus, Bank of China (Shanghai) was completely incapable of helping me to convert US dollars in my Bank of China (Beijng) account into renminbi. Or of allowing me to withdraw those funds. Or of doing anything at all that involved my passbook. I could still use an ATM to access renminbi, which would have been great had I any renminbi left in my account.

At any other time this would have been no big deal. This week, when I am signing the lease on a new apartment (one month's rent, two month's deposit) and buying plane tickets back to Singapore for May holidays, it was catastrophic.

The whole experience reinforced my long-standing opinion that Bank of China is essentially the Bank of Bedrock (as in The Flintstones for generationally challenged readers), and that the back office is nothing more than a bunch of cavemen wearing leopard skins and using talking birds to chisel database entries into stone slabs.*

So I was left understandably clammy by today's announcement that Bank of China is going to open a private banking service for local millionaires:

Bank of China (BOC), the nation's second largest state-owned commercial lender, launched a private banking service for millionaires only in Beijing and Shanghai Wednesday.

Only clients with financial assets exceeding one million US dollars are eligible for the service that is being offered in conjunction with the Royal Bank of Scotland, which owns a 4.4 percent stake in the bank.

Yuan Kuntao, general manager of the UK-based bank's Asia-Pacific division, said the private banking service would be able to meet the customized needs of Chinese customers, adding that it was almost on a par with its overseas peers.

 OK, so they have an ace in the hole in the form of a partnership with RBS. Still, you have to love the statement at the end that the private banking service will be "almost on a par" with its overseas peers, suggesting that China's millionaires are "almost on a par" with their global counterparts. But perhaps not quite. The missing elements will no doubt be the offshore tax haven part and the ability to enable you to access your money from anywhere beyond the local suburbs, let alone Monaco or Davos. Millionaires, line up!

Tricky people, those millionaires. Really good at finding creative ways to manage their money. Those ways do not include using government-owned sloth banks that still think that an adding machine is the is the height of banking technology and that "service" is what the girls at the local karaoke joint give the branch manager on Thursday nights.

More seriously, there is a real brand element to private banking. If ever something was exclusive by definition, it's private banking services. The very fact that BoC is BoC means it will only ever appeal to a certain segment of China's nouveaux riches (are there any other kind of riches in China?). True, there is an emerging middle-ground for the mass affluent (a group that does not include Imagethief). But I expect the fat money will seek out the prestigious global names. And the really fat money will probably seek out the names that are so rarefied and exclusive that threadbare geeks like me haven't even heard of them.

Whatever Bank of China's brand stands for, it sure isn't exclusivity, luxury, privacy or fawning, obsequious service. RBS may have some of that, especially at the mass-affluent level, but probably not enough to paper over the warty BoC brand.

Perhaps some of China's low-end rich will find the idea of a Chinese private bank comforting. And the government would probably really like all that filthy lucre to stay onshore. But the super-wealthy will seek out the same exclusive names they do overseas (and probably the same offshore destinations when they think they can get away with it). Meanwhile, the mass-market global banks that won RMB banking licenses late last year will probably have their flinty eyes on the same medium-high rollers that BoC is eying. Best of luck, guys.

*ICBC is no better. My company uses ICBC to pay expense claims. Unfortunately, ICBC is unable to pay my claims into either a Shanghai Bank of China account or a Beijing ICBC account. They can only pay them into a Shanghai ICBC account. I am now festooned with four Chinese bank accounts. My wife has two. When it comes to bookkeeping, the Sopranos have nothing on me.

Disclaimer: Imagethief doesn't know crap about private banking and isn't in danger of earning enough money for it to become relevant to him any time soon. He is, whether he likes it or not, still squarely in the turgid, middlebrow embrace of Bank of China.