A mobile luxury cabin sits in the parking lot of Umpqua Bank’s branch on Century Drive in Bend while, a half-mile away, Erin Peacock prepares to begin her fourth week as a private banker at the Wells Fargo Bank location at Mill Point.

The link?

The 400-square-foot cabin, which sells for $75,000, and Peacock’s position likely would not be in Bend if not for the surge of affluent people in Central Oregon in the last few years.

Local banking officials say the region’s concentration of baby boomers with a high level of disposable income has pushed banks to develop ways to capture that lucrative market.

”Every bank, if they’re smart, realizes that there is a young retired demographic that’s drawn to the Central Oregon area,” said Julie Miller, senior vice president and regional manager for Bend-based Bank of the Cascades. ”I’d be surprised if there’s a bank that hasn’t figured that out yet. (The difference) is how you target that market.”

For Roseburg-based Umpqua, the mobile cabin was it. Known for unconventional marketing techniques, the bank knew it had something when the owners of Salem-based Ideabox, the designers of the Northwest Modern cabin, opened a business account with Umpqua.

”In the Bend area, a lot of people go for second homes,” said Lani Hayward, director of creative strategies with Umpqua, adding that a luxury mobile cabin would provide a convenient solution for those people.

”This may be unusual in terms of the space it’s taking up,” she said. ”But we think that, if it’s to the interest of the community we’re in, we’ll keep doing it.”

The owners of Ideabox said Umpqua officials asked them to bring the Northwest Modern prototype to Bend for display. The cabin – including one bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room pre-wired for a premium audio system – is a perfect fit for Bend’s higher-end clientele, they said.

”This is an upscale product,” said Jim Russell, who designed the cabin and is one of Ideabox’s owners. ”And Bend is an upscale market. People were stopping in the streets and looking (it) over. A couple of people actually stopped in the middle of the street to take a look.”

Cabin open houses are planned on weekends until July 30.

For San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, the path to the affluent market takes a different turn. The bank started offering private banker services in Central Oregon earlier this month, one of several banks operating private banking departments in the region.

Essentially, a private banker is a one-stop shop for banking consumers with more than deposits on their minds.

Through a private banker, customers – often affluent – can be connected to services like insurance, commercial investment, international fund transfers and large-scale financial planning.

Wells Fargo says private banking clients usually meet at least one of three criteria: They could have more than $250,000 in annual household income, investable assets of $500,000 or more, or have a net worth of at least $1 million, not counting their primary residence.

”Our role is fairly new to the Bend area,” said Wells Fargo’s Peacock, one of two private bankers the bank has in the region. ”A lot of clients experienced growth in their wealth and asset levels, and a lot of people are moving here with their wealth. For them, we’re the single point of contact, the conduit between these clients and the rest of our banking services.”

Peacock said the two bankers help about 50 to 100 customers each, spread over the two-thirds of Oregon east of the Cascades. As such, travel is the norm, she said.

”I’m all over the place,” Peacock said. ”You’ll find me on the road very often. A lot of people don’t like to meet over the phone. They like to see the person dealing with their money.”

Regional Wells Fargo officials say they are targeting smaller cities with a higher concentration of the affluent demographic because, in many cases, those towns lack the competition for the high-end dollar.

If successful, it will give the bank a significant boost in the Oregon market, one official said.

”These are the markets we have to execute very well in,” said Tim Wallace, Wells Fargo’s regional private banking manager for Oregon and southwest Washington. ”In some sense, they are equally as important, maybe even more so, than the Portland market. These are the markets that some people tend to overlook, and that’s the case with some of our competitors.”

Others, like The Dalles-based Columbia River Bank and Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank, also offer private banking in Central Oregon.

However, the two banks based in the region, Bank of the Cascades and Prineville’s Community First Bank, do not have private bankers. But both said they offer services targeting the higher-end demographic.

”We believe we can treat all customers at the same level as a private banking department with another bank would,” Cascade’s Miller said. ”We don’t want to pick and choose our services based on their affluence.”

As for Umpqua’s cabin idea, opinions are mixed.

”I think what they’re doing is developing a brand, something for people to look at,” said Robin Freeman, president and CEO of Community First. ”I’m not sure that’s what customers are looking for long term. But they’ve done a great job of getting people through their doors.”

Miller was less enthusiastic about the cabin.

What customers want in the end is a good bank with bankers they can rely upon, she said.