Ameris Bank

H. Palmer Proctor Jr. serves as CEO and a director of Ameris Bancorp, the publicly traded holding company. Investment and lending decisions reside with the bank's credit committee and its line-of-business heads, not a family-office investment committee. Proctor has shaped the bank's acquisition-oriented growth strategy since the early 2000s.

No. Ameris Bank is a commercial bank, not a fund-of-funds or direct-investment platform. Its 'investment' activity consists of direct lending — commercial real estate, C&I loans, SBA 7(a) and 504 loans, residential mortgages, and insurance premium finance. It is an origination-and-hold bank, not an allocator deploying capital to outside managers.

Ameris Bank does not co-invest alongside GPs in a traditional sense. It may participate in single-bank or multi-bank loan syndications for larger commercial credits, but these are credit facilities, not equity co-investments. The bank acts as a portfolio lender, not an LP.

Ameris is a Preferred Lender Program (PLP) participant, meaning it can approve SBA loans without additional SBA review, accelerating the origination process. The bank originates both 7(a) and 504 loans, predominantly to small businesses across the Southeast. It may sell the guaranteed portion of 7(a) loans into the secondary market for liquidity and gain-on-sale income, then typically retains servicing.

H. Palmer Proctor Jr. has served as CEO since the early 2000s, and his family previously operated a chain of community banks. The bank is publicly traded; the Proctor family's current percentage ownership is not disclosed in detail beyond standard SEC filings for executive holdings.