On July 1, 2019, Palmer Proctor became chief executive of Ameris Bancorp and Ameris Bank. The appointment arrived with a completed acquisition, 62 incoming Fidelity branches and a combined institution operating across four states. A new chief executive usually gets a period in which to introduce himself. Proctor’s introduction came attached to a merger.
He had spent 29 years at Fidelity Bank. By then, he had managed branch administration, operations, mortgage and investment services, and commercial lending. His career had taken him through the departments that make a bank function before taking him to the office responsible for all of them. The headline changed in a day. The preparation had taken rather longer.
That gap between the sudden appointment and the slow accumulation of experience is the useful place to begin his story. Proctor’s public career offers few theatrical reinventions. It offers a long run of increasing responsibility, a recurring relationship with Fidelity chairman James B. Miller Jr., and an expanding set of institutions willing to put him on their boards.
- Joins FidelityA career across the bank’s operating departments.
- Becomes bank presidentFidelity is planning more Atlanta branches.
- Takes the CEO roleTwenty-seven years after joining Fidelity.
- Leads the combined AmerisThe Fidelity acquisition closes on July 1.
01 /Fourteen years before the president’s desk
Proctor is a native of Tallahassee, Florida, and a graduate of Auburn University and the Stonier Graduate School of Banking at Georgetown University. Atlanta became the setting for his banking career. He joined Fidelity in 1990, when his eventual appointment as its president was still fourteen years away.
The route matters because those early responsibilities touched different sides of the same customer relationship. Branch administration concerned the places people visited. Mortgage services concerned borrowing for a home. Commercial lending concerned the businesses asking a bank to help finance their next move. Operations concerned the machinery behind those promises. His eventual authority rested on experience across that machinery.
In October 2004, Fidelity made him bank president and a director. Later that month, he joined the holding company’s board. Miller explained that Fidelity was preparing to grow its branch network around greater Atlanta and that Proctor had helped develop the plan. The promotion carried an assignment: turn familiarity with the institution into a larger institution.
At the time, Fidelity had approximately $1.2 billion in assets, more than 350 employees and 19 full-service Atlanta branches. Those figures give the appointment its proper scale. This was a community bank with room to expand, and Proctor was moving into its presidency while the expansion was still a plan.
02 /The Golden Rule gets a regional address
He became president of Fidelity Southern Corporation in April 2006. Another eleven years passed before he became Fidelity Bank’s chief executive in April 2017. Miller remained a central figure in the company; Proctor’s advancement had unfolded over years of working within its leadership structure.
When the chief executive appointment was announced, Proctor described a regional bank committed to the “Golden Rule” for its customers, employees and stockholders. It was an unusually familiar phrase for a statement about a promotion. Schoolroom ethics had made it into the executive announcement. Banking had supplied three constituencies who might occasionally disagree about the application.
The phrase also supplies a way of reading his later decisions. A growing regional bank has to answer to borrowers, depositors, employees and owners at once. Treating each group fairly is an intention; organizing a larger business so it can keep doing so is the continuing work. By 2017, Proctor had spent twenty-seven years learning the organization he was being asked to lead.
03 /A merger with no quiet first morning
Two years later, Fidelity became part of Ameris. The acquisition closed on July 1, 2019, and Fidelity Bank merged into Ameris Bank. Proctor, formerly Fidelity Southern’s president and Fidelity Bank’s chief executive, took charge of the combined company and bank. Miller became executive chairman. Their working relationship survived the change of name.
The merger brought together a bank with 176 locations in Georgia, Alabama, Florida and South Carolina. The announced combined assets were $16.4 billion, calculated from March 2019 financial data before purchase accounting adjustments. Proctor had moved from growing Fidelity to overseeing the integration of two businesses, each with its own staff and customers.
His early Ameris responsibilities included the merger, a rebrand and the headquarters move to Atlanta. Ameris had its own history, beginning as American Banking Company in 1971. Fidelity had its own identity and customer relationships. A merger could combine the balance sheets immediately. Establishing how colleagues would work together required a longer calendar.
A merger could combine the balance sheets immediately. Establishing how colleagues would work together required a longer calendar.
From the story
04 /The surprisingly revealing intranet
By 2021, Proctor was talking publicly about an internal communications project: a new intranet designed for regular, two-way communication with employees. The project addressed a problem that comes with distance: how a growing bank could maintain connections among its people, including colleagues who would seldom be in the same room.
“This is allowing us to grow without losing the interpersonal connections,” he said. The sentence is a more concrete expression of his leadership interests than a general declaration about culture. It connects the size of the organization to the daily ability of employees to communicate with it.
The same period brought leadership development programs, employee resource groups and the bank’s first corporate social responsibility report. In 2021, the Atlanta Business Chronicle included Proctor among its Most Admired CEOs. Taken together, those developments show the internal work accompanying the external transformation: a chief executive trying to give a combined workforce ways to participate in the organization taking shape around them.
05 /A bell in New York, a calendar in Atlanta
In July 2024, Ameris moved its stock listing from Nasdaq to the New York Stock Exchange, retaining the ticker ABCB. The executive team and directors marked the transfer by ringing the exchange’s opening bell. In the accompanying NYSE interview, Proctor discussed the listing change and a growth strategy involving acquisitions and organic expansion.
The photograph is an appealing interruption in a career otherwise measured in appointments and reporting periods: Proctor, a mallet and a very polished bell. Public markets do occasionally allow their participants a prop. The stated business purpose was greater visibility and a stronger market position for Ameris.
His other board appointments show how far his working world extends beyond bank branches. Brown & Brown appointed him a director in October 2012. He also holds directorships at Choate Construction and Inspire Brands. Insurance, construction and restaurants put him alongside businesses with different operating rhythms and financial demands.
There is a parallel Atlanta calendar. He has served as president of Callanwolde Fine Arts Center and remains an emeritus director, and he is a former Fernbank Museum trustee. His civic record also includes the Westside Future Fund campaign and the Rotary Club of Atlanta. These are specific institutional commitments, extending his public role into the city’s cultural and civic life.
06 /Nashville, and the less photogenic work of growth
In June 2026, Ameris announced plans for a Nashville office by year-end. The bank was already serving commercial and mortgage customers in the region. Justin McClain was named market leader, reporting to bank president Lawton Bassett, with Charlie Ogden and Jesse Lee joining the team.
Expansion becomes tangible when a company identifies the people who will do it. A new market needs a team before it needs an opening ceremony. Nashville gave Proctor another setting in which to apply the regional banking approach he had been discussing since Fidelity: enter a growing market with bankers who know the place and customers who need decisions.
The year also brought changes within his executive team. In February, Ameris announced the planned retirements of chief strategy officer Jim LaHaise and chief risk officer Bill McKendry. General auditor David Boggs was selected to become chief risk officer after a transition, while Michael Pierson was assigned oversight of mortgage, equipment finance and premium finance operations.
Succession is less photogenic than the opening bell. It carries more immediate consequences for how the bank runs. For Proctor, whose own career developed through successive promotions, these changes put the question of continuity on the other side of the desk. He was now the chief executive overseeing the next set of handovers.
07 /The numbers keep their own counsel
At June 30, 2026, Ameris had $28.49 billion in assets. Its second-quarter results also contained a complication: an $82.5 million litigation expense accrual tied to an employment-case jury verdict in California. Reported quarterly net income was $51.4 million, compared with $109.8 million a year earlier.
Adjusted net income, which excluded the litigation accrual and a securities gain, was $107.3 million. The distinction matters. The adjusted measure describes operations with specified items removed; the reported result includes the cost recognized during the quarter. Both belong beside the expansion plans. A chief executive’s story is more useful when the inconvenient figures retain their seats.
Ameris scheduled its third-quarter results for after the market close on October 22, with Proctor joining the following morning’s investor call. The next reporting date offers another examination of the strategy he has been pursuing. The longer career supplies the context: learning Fidelity’s departments, helping plan its growth, becoming its chief executive, then taking responsibility for the combined Ameris.
The recurring question has changed scale more than subject. How does a bank add markets, colleagues and customers while keeping the working relationships dependable? Proctor has approached it through years inside the business, internal communication and repeated changes in responsibility. Nashville adds another address to the question. The answer will depend on what happens after the opening announcements.