The assignment sounded almost modest: hire some bankers and find office space. In January 2015, ServisFirst announced that Tom Trouche would establish its presence in Charleston. A bank that had begun in Birmingham was entering another market. Trouche, meanwhile, was taking on a new employer in a place that was already home. The institution needed an introduction to Charleston. Its regional chief had been making introductions there for years.
By then, he had more than a quarter-century of banking experience. His previous job was Coastal Division Executive at First Citizens, where he had spent over 13 years. He arrived with experience in developing business, managing client relationships, and overseeing portfolios. Now those skills came with an unusually practical brief. Before there could be a regional operation to run, there had to be an operation.
Bank titles can make a career sound like a succession of increasingly comfortable chairs. This one involved assembling the room. Trouche’s appointment offers a useful starting point for understanding his working life: a Charleston native helping an Alabama bank enter a city where his own connections extended well beyond banking.
A new bank, a familiar city
Trouche began serving as ServisFirst’s Charleston president and chief executive in December 2014. The public announcement followed in January. That distinction matters because it separates the start of the work from its introduction to the world. The new region was already taking shape when the appointment became news.
Only weeks earlier, in November 2014, First Citizens had included Trouche in an announced leadership team for its combined banking company. He was named to lead the Southern Coastal area in a structure scheduled to take effect the following January. The territory stretched beyond Charleston to communities including Beaufort, Bluffton, Hilton Head, and Savannah. By December, he had begun his ServisFirst role. The two announcements put the career change in unusually sharp focus: a banker already entrusted with a coastal territory was moving to the task of establishing a new regional presence.
For ServisFirst, Charleston was part of a wider expansion. The bank identified the Greater Charleston and Tri-County operation as its eighth region. Its approach depended on experienced local bankers bringing a new institution into a market they understood. Trouche had the regional background the assignment called for, along with the responsibility to turn familiarity into a functioning business.
The bank’s expansion model also gave local relationships a formal place. Historically, when entering new markets, it had raised money from local investors, some of whom were customers. That broader practice helps explain the setting of Trouche’s appointment: local knowledge had a place in the business plan, alongside the financial resources needed to open an office and begin serving customers.
History degree
College of Charleston
Joins ServisFirst
Charleston leadership
Port Ambassador
Program graduate
The history student who stayed connected
Trouche’s degree was in history. He graduated from the College of Charleston in 1987, having attended from 1982. It is an appealing detail in a banking biography, partly because the résumé briefly steps away from the expected vocabulary of credit and finance. His education put him in the same city that would remain central to his professional life.
The college also belongs to his family story. It was there that he met Ariel, who became his wife. Her own career developed in residential and investment real estate around Charleston. Tom is a seventh-generation Charleston native, and the couple have three sons. Their connections to the city reach across different kinds of work.
His association with the college continued after graduation. In 2013, Thomas G. Trouche, class of 1987, served on the Alumni Association Board. Years later, he became a member of the J. Waties Waring Society, created for former alumni officers and board members.
The society inducted its inaugural members in May 2024. For Trouche, inclusion places another date beside an association that began as a student. Graduation can be a tidy ending in a biography. Here, the college keeps returning: as the place he studied, the place he met Ariel, and an institution he later helped serve.
Four names before a new front door
At ServisFirst’s Charleston launch, Trouche was joined by Bobby Warrick, Allston Moore, and Seth Horton. The names came with distinct responsibilities. Warrick was senior vice president and senior lender; Moore led private banking as a senior vice president; Horton was senior vice president for business development. The team gave the new operation several ways to begin working with the market.
Warrick had previously been Commercial Market Executive at CresCom Bank. His new responsibilities included lending needs, credit underwriting, loan approval, and portfolio management. Those are the mechanics underneath the broad promise of commercial banking. Trouche’s role was to develop and lead the regional team, with colleagues handling the specialized work that made the operation useful.
The distinction between a regional launch and a bank’s founding is worth preserving. ServisFirst had been established in Birmingham in 2005. Trouche joined an existing institution and helped establish it in Charleston. He had the resources of a wider bank behind him and a local team to assemble in front of him. His task belonged to the demanding middle ground between inheriting an office and founding a company.
THE CHARLESTON LAUNCH · JANUARY 2015
A city larger than a client list
Trouche’s Charleston connections have included institutions with very different purposes. In 2015, his civic commitments included board service with the American Red Cross and the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. He had also previously chaired Mason Preparatory School’s board. Education, the arts, and charitable work sit beside the banking career.
Those roles should keep their own identities. A school board has responsibilities to an educational institution. An orchestra’s board serves an arts organization. It would be too neat to turn every civic commitment into an extension of business development. What the appointments establish is a working life that has included obligations beyond his employer.
In 2016, Tom and Ariel co-chaired the Red Cross Clara Barton Campaign fundraiser. The shared assignment adds another dimension to the couple’s Charleston story. Their professional paths involved banking and property; this was a project they took on together. The episode fits a broader pattern of involvement without requiring a grand theory about their private motivations.
For a profile of a regional executive, these details matter because a title provides such a narrow frame. President and CEO identifies authority within a bank. School, alumni, and charitable responsibilities show other places where Trouche’s name has appeared on the list of people expected to help.
Back to class, beside the harbor
In 2018-19, Trouche joined the South Carolina Ports Authority’s Port Ambassador Program. He was one of 25 delegates who completed it. The ten-month course introduced participants to port operations through educational sessions and tours, including terminals, inland ports, cruise vessels, and manufacturing operations.
It was an education in the connections between maritime activity and the businesses around it. The class brought together people from finance, government, manufacturing, education, and other fields. Trouche entered as a banker from Charleston, alongside participants whose work took them into quite different parts of the state’s economy.
The class celebrated graduation on June 6, 2019, aboard Carnival Sunshine in Charleston Harbor. Delegates received certificates and a framed proclamation signed by Governor Henry McMaster. A cruise ship makes a rather livelier graduation venue than the average conference room. For Trouche, the course added a formal introduction to the port’s workings to years of experience in its surrounding city.
The hiring work continues
A decade after the Charleston launch, recruitment was still part of Trouche’s public work. In the first quarter of 2025, ServisFirst welcomed six additions to the office. The appointments covered commercial banking, branch management, portfolio management, and client services. The range echoed the original task: assemble people with different responsibilities around the needs of a regional operation.
Alycia Dinkins, Kurt Seguer, and Landon Davis were identified as senior vice presidents in commercial banking. Fran Hollington joined as branch manager, Richard A. Johnson II as portfolio manager, and Sandy Singleton in client services. Trouche welcomed the group and emphasized their experience and community connections. His comments placed the hires within the continuing work of serving businesses and individuals.
“Thomas brings strong credit knowledge, relationship-building skills, and a clear commitment to serving clients well.”
Tom Trouche, welcoming commercial banker Thomas Hartnett
In welcoming commercial banking officer Thomas Hartnett, Trouche offered a compact statement of what he valued in that appointment. He singled out credit knowledge, relationship-building, and client service. Technical judgment and the ability to work with people appeared in the same sentence. That combination also runs through the responsibilities described when Trouche himself joined the bank.
ServisFirst’s second-quarter 2026 investor presentation continued to list Thomas G. Trouche as executive vice president and regional CEO for Charleston. More than eleven years after his arrival, the city remained beside his name. The initial brief had become an ongoing leadership role.
His career has moved through employers, assignments, and civic commitments while remaining closely tied to Charleston. The history degree, alumni board, regional launch, and port course each reveal a different connection to the place. The interesting work is in their accumulation: learning a city, accepting responsibilities within it, and helping a new set of colleagues find their place there.