Switzerland's largest bank UBS AG opened a ground-floor sub-branch in Beijing on Wednesday, the first of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region, in a latest move to tap into China's multi-billion-dollar wealth management market.

It is the first sub-branch of the Swiss bank in the Chinese mainland, which is located in China Central Place, also known as Huamao Center, a commercial hub in eastern Beijing's Central Business District.

The ground-floor presence is a rare practice for the global wealth management provider, and is aimed at raising its brand awareness among the wealthy Chinese population, analysts said.

The establishment of the Beijing sub-branch shows that the company is trying to become a leading global wealth manager in China, according to Karen Chen, head of China Wealth Management and president (designated) of UBS (China) Ltd.

A swelling population of China's rich and increasing number of billionaires are raising demand for wealth management, which has been a battle ground for many domestic and foreign financial institutions.

China is the country with the largest number of billionaires after the US, with a total of 301 billionaires in 2014, including 190 billionaires with the wealth of $440 billion in the mainland alone, up 21 and 15 percent from 2013 respectively, according to a Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census 2014 report released in September. 

In 2012, the Swiss bank's wholly owned subsidiary UBS (China) Ltd was incorporated in Beijing, focusing on providing wealth management advice and solutions to Chinese high net worth individuals to meet their personal investment, corporate governance and family needs.

The bank is also preparing to open a branch in Shanghai which is expected to open in about a year, Edmund Koh, head of UBS Wealth Management South East Asia and APAC Hub, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

The minimum asset required to be a UBS (China) client is 5 million yuan ($813,008).

"The advantage of the Swiss bank is its international exposure and global network compared with Chinese domestic banks and other smaller wealth managers such as securities firms and asset management companies," Deng Wenyi, a product manager at Huaxi Securities in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

But domestic wealth managers have an advantage over their foreign peers in terms of the numbers of outlets and closer connections with Chinese entrepreneurs and the new rich, who have received financing help for business growth from the wealth managers from the very beginning, she said.

Swiss banks have long been regarded as the safest worldwide for strictly protecting privacy of their clients. However, under a global pressure, Switzerland began a process to put in place a framework for automatic exchange of information on tax matters with the US, European Union and other selected countries, which are not disclosed so far.

Under the automatic exchange of tax information, Swiss banking institutions may be obliged to disclose account and client information.

This could be a concern for some potential wealthy clients, Deng said.