Forty years is a respectable amount of time to spend learning a business before volunteering to start another chapter of it. When Rick Manley took charge of ServisFirst Bank’s arrival in Charlotte in 2022, he brought that much banking experience to a market where a new name would still have to earn its place. Experience could get him through the door. A working bank would require other people to walk through it.
ServisFirst’s announcement on March 14 gave him the title of Piedmont Regional President and CEO. The assignment was concrete: establish the bank in Charlotte. He had already worked across commercial lending, private-client banking, retail banking and regional management. Now those years would be put to work introducing a Birmingham-based institution to a North Carolina market he knew.
There is a satisfying reversal in that proposition. The executive arrives with decades behind him; the regional business has its beginning ahead of it. Manley’s career makes more sense when those two clocks are allowed to run together. He has repeatedly occupied the space between an institution’s ambition to expand and the local work needed to make expansion useful.
The earlier map
Long before the ServisFirst chapter, Manley joined First Charter in 1999. He became its chief banking officer, with earlier experience at Centura, Barnett and Regions. His work had ranged through sales management, corporate marketing, commercial lending and retail management. These are different views of the same customer: the person a bank hopes to attract, lend to and keep.
By December 2006, he had another regional assignment. First National Bank of the South named him regional executive officer for its expansion into York and Lancaster counties in South Carolina. The proposed first step was a loan production office in Rock Hill, followed by a larger retail and business banking presence.
A loan production office is a modest phrase for an ambitious undertaking. It gives a bank a way to develop lending business in a market before establishing the full range of branch services. In Manley’s assignment, the sequence was explicit: start with lending, then build a broader presence. The eventual outcome should not be confused with the plan; what matters here is the responsibility he was given.
The same appointment identified his Bachelor of Science from Troy State University, now Troy University, and his attendance at the Graduate School of Banking at LSU. His education sits beside a career increasingly concerned with regional execution. By the time Charlotte became his ServisFirst assignment, entering a market was familiar professional territory.
- 1999Joins First Charter
- 2006Rock Hill expansion assignment
- 2021First Horizon regional leadership
- 2022Leads ServisFirst’s Charlotte entry
Who gets to say yes?
At First Horizon, Manley’s regional responsibilities included North Carolina and Virginia. He had also held senior roles at Capital Bank, including market leadership for the Carolinas and East Tennessee. His responsibilities extended from business strategy and revenue to commercial real estate lending and the management of banking businesses serving different kinds of clients.
In a 2021 interview, he described a preference with a very practical consequence: management, decisions and approvals located in the local market. Banking discussions often become a contest between the size of an institution and the warmth of its welcome. Manley’s account directed attention toward the organization of the work itself. Where does a decision happen? Who is responsible for it?
“local market management, decisions and approvals”
Rick Manley, describing First Horizon’s model in 2021
He also described bringing roughly 150 employees from the legacy Capital Bank business in Charlotte into one centralized location. Commercial banking, private-client banking, real estate and support functions were brought together. The scale belonged to that earlier operation, rather than his later ServisFirst team. The operational interest is clear: colleagues doing related work could share a roof.
The combination suggests a practical interest in how a bank arranges its people. A customer may bring one business question to the bank, while answering it can involve several departments. Bringing colleagues together and locating decisions in a market address related organizational problems. In Manley’s account, the working arrangement was part of what the bank offered its customers.
A team before a footprint
ServisFirst’s Charlotte arrival soon acquired more names. In May 2022, Craig May III joined as Charlotte Regional President, and Robert Shell II joined as Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer. Both were Charlotte natives. Manley welcomed them as bankers whose experience would help the new operation serve the market.
May arrived with more than 35 years in corporate, commercial and community banking. His earlier positions included leadership at JPMorgan Chase and a long period at Wells Fargo and its predecessor Wachovia. Shell brought 28 years of experience, including work at TD Bank, Paragon and Wells Fargo. His background covered both line banking and credit.
The distinction matters. A lending business needs the ability to develop relationships and the judgment to evaluate the business those relationships bring. The two appointments put identifiable people behind those responsibilities. For Manley, the regional CEO role now sat alongside a regional president and a chief credit officer. The opening announcement was becoming an organization.
At the time, the Piedmont office was in SouthPark Towers. By December, the Charlotte headquarters had moved to the tenth floor of Panorama Tower in Ballantyne. A bank may speak in regions, but its staff still need an actual place to meet, work and receive customers. Market strategy eventually becomes a question about the lift.
at the 2022 appointment
reported in 2023
The address becomes a business
Manley spoke publicly about the Panorama Tower choice as part of the bank’s plans to grow in the area. The lease covered 5,500 square feet. That figure describes the office, rather than the business it might eventually generate. Still, it gives the expansion a physical scale: a new operation making room for its people.
In 2023, ServisFirst described the Charlotte headquarters move and plans for a Lake Norman loan production office. The Charlotte and Lake Norman operations together accounted for 17 employees. Those were early regional figures, a snapshot of the buildout rather than a current headcount or a measure of the entire bank.
Manley presented the operation as an alternative for commercial and private banking customers. The language of competition was straightforward. There were prospective clients already served by other institutions, and ServisFirst wanted their consideration. Opening an office created somewhere to have that conversation; assembling the team gave the conversation its substance.
The hiring continued. In November 2023, Winston Felker joined as Senior Vice President and Charlotte Market President after nine years in the city’s banking industry. His experience included credit analysis, portfolio management and commercial relationship work at Truist. Manley’s regional business was adding another layer of local leadership.
Beyond the first office
Services expanded alongside the team. In March 2024, Christy Phillips joined as a mortgage loan officer for the North Carolina operation, serving Charlotte, Lake Norman and Western North Carolina. Manley described the appointment as a complement to the state buildout. Commercial relationships were being joined by the ability to address customers’ mortgage needs.
The local account of Phillips’s appointment identified her as the first mortgage loan officer within ServisFirst’s North Carolina offices. That detail puts a useful boundary around the development. It was a new capability for this regional operation. It also illustrates how a banking presence can deepen after its initial market entry.
At the Cornelius office grand opening, Peter Gwaltney publicly congratulated his friend Manley and the team. Mayor Woody Washam spoke at the event. The photographs show colleagues gathered together and the mayor addressing the occasion, with ceremonial scissors making their inevitable appearance. Even banking, which has digitized so much, retains a fondness for conspicuous stationery.
By June 2025, the regional story included fresh appointments in Asheville. Jeff Austin was promoted to market president, and Hank Hodge joined as a commercial relationship manager. Manley emphasized their connections to the area and the role they would play in developing the business. The names changed; local experience remained central to the explanation.
A separate announcement that month introduced David Barron as a commercial banker in Western North Carolina, focused on his hometown communities of Waynesville and Canton. Manley pointed to his market knowledge and experience supporting businesses. The regional geography was becoming more specific, moving from a state label to individual communities and the bankers who knew them.
Another name joins the team
In May 2026, ServisFirst’s regional management presentation listed Manley as Executive Vice President and Regional CEO for North Carolina. The following month, the Charlotte operation announced Mitch Sells as Senior Vice President, Commercial Banking Executive. His remit covered commercial relationships across the Charlotte metropolitan area, including lending, deposits and treasury management for small businesses and middle-market clients.
Manley highlighted Sells’s commercial lending and relationship-management experience in Charlotte. Four years after the entry announcement, recruiting remained part of the work. An opening chapter had become a continuing regional operation, still adding people to serve the market it had entered.
The sequence describes a particular kind of working life: an experienced banker repeatedly taking responsibility for a local business inside a larger institution. From the Rock Hill assignment to the Charlotte launch, Manley’s career returns to the practical task of making a bank present in a place. The name on the door gets an unveiling. The team has to come back the next morning.