ServisFirst Bancshares Inc

Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm

To the shareholders and the board of directors of ServisFirst Bancshares, Inc.

Opinion on the Consolidated Financial Statements

We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheets of ServisFirst Bancshares, Inc. and subsidiaries (the “Company”) as of December 31, 2023 and 2022, the related consolidated statements of income, comprehensive income, stockholders’ equity, and cash flows for each of the years in the three-year period ended December 31, 2023, and the related notes (collectively referred to as the “consolidated financial statements”). In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements referred to above present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company as of December 31, 2023 and 2022, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for each of the years in the three-year period ended December 31, 2023, in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.

We also have audited, in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (“PCAOB”), the Company’s internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2023, based on criteria established inInternal Control–* Integrated Framework (2013)* issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission and our report dated February 29, 2024, expressed an unqualified opinion thereon.

Basis for Opinion

These consolidated financial statements are the responsibility of the Company’s management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company’s consolidated financial statements based on our audits.

We are a public accounting firm registered with the PCAOB and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audits to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the consolidated financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud.

Our audits included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the consolidated financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures include examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the consolidated financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the consolidated financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical Audit Matter

The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current-period audit of the consolidated financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that: (1) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the consolidated financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of the critical audit matter does not alter in any way our opinion on the consolidated financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.

Allowance for Loan Losses

The Company’s loan portfolio and the associated allowance for credit losses (“allowance”) were $11.66 billion and $153.3 million as of December 31, 2023, respectively. As further described in Notes 1 and 3 to the consolidated financial statements, the amount of the allowance represents management’s best estimate of current expected credit losses on loans considering the characteristics of the loan portfolio and the economic environment. To calculate the allowance, loans with similar risk characteristics are collectively evaluated in pools and loans that do not share similar risk characteristics are excluded from the collective pools and evaluated on an individual basis. Management evaluates each loan pool utilizing a discounted cash flow, probability of default / loss given default or remaining life method, depending on the nature of the loan pool. Losses are predicted over a period of time determined to be reasonable and supportable, and after such period, losses are reverted to long term historical averages. The estimated credit losses for each loan pool are then adjusted for qualitative factors not inherently considered in the quantitative analyses. Consideration is given to the following factors: lending policy, changes in nature and volume of loans, staff experience, changes in volume and trends of problem loans, concentration risk, trends in underlying collateral values, external factors, quality of loan review system and other economic conditions. Estimating qualitative factor adjustments requires significant judgment and can either increase or decrease the quantitative model estimation.

We identified the allowance for credit losses, and more specifically the qualitative factor adjustments applied in the allowance, as a critical audit matter. The principal consideration for our determination of the qualitative factor adjustments as a critical audit matter is the subjectivity of the assumptions that management utilized in determining and applying qualitative factors in the allowance model. Furthermore, certain inputs and assumptions lack observable data and, therefore, applying audit procedures required a higher degree of auditor judgment and subjectivity due to the nature and extent of audit evidence and effort required to address this matter.

The primary audit procedures we performed to address this critical audit matter included:

/s/ FORVIS, LLP

We have served as the Company’s auditor since 2014.

Tampa, Florida