Valley Bank is deploying gen AI tools throughout the organization with a focus on improving its commercial client services and interactions. 

The $62 billion bank is working on a gen AI commercial client servicing platform that its employees can use to gain insights into client activity and open doors for personalized cross-selling, Chief Data and Analytics Officer Sanjay Sidhwani, told FinAi News.

“We are now able to track at a very granular level any client’s activity, their full 360 view,” Sidhwani said. 

Through the platform, Valley Bank can learn: 

• How long a client has been with the bank;  

• The client’s bank activities;  

• Their balances and nature of transactions; and 

• Whether they are paying external vendors. 

The data provides ample opportunity for the Morristown, N.J.-based bank to cross-sell its services. If, for example, the bank sees that a commercial client is using a third party for payroll, it can offer up Valley’s services, Sidhwani said. 

“Banks have always had access to all transactions, it’s about how you use it,” Sidhwani said. “Earlier it was an uninformed conversation, but now those conversations tend to be more informed by what we are seeing with the customer’s actual behavior.” 

The bank is using OpenAI’s base AI model to collect public domain data and compile internal data on commercial clients to give its bankers a better understanding of client needs, he said.  

“If we know that they are opening a new location, we can provide financial services to aid them,” he said. 

Pulling together the 360-degree view of a customer before AI would have been a long process, Sidhwani said, adding that it can be done in close to 30 seconds with AI, depending on the client. He expects the tool to be rolled out in the first half of 2026. 

FIs including TD Bank and BNY are already using AI for cross-selling or providing personalized services. 

Other AI uses at Valley 

As Valley Bank deployed AI, Sidhwani said, itshat initial focus was on reducing manual processes. 

“We have deployed it in our call center, which has reduced call times by nearly 30 seconds on average over a five-minute call,” he said. “When you add that over hundreds of thousands of calls, it matters a lot.” 

The bank’s data analytics team also uses a gen AI software development tool for improved query and coding assistance, Sidhwani said. Nearly 95% of the bank’s data team now uses the tool, he added. 

The bank is also working on an agentic AI tool that will help clients with self-servicinge, and . It will help reduce headcount. 

“We are not there quite yet, but it will eventually get there,” he said. 

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