Valley Bank is rolling out AI tools for customer-facing applications and internal processes such as underwriting, sales and fraud detection.  

The $64 billion bank’s commitment to improving the “granularity, consistency and infrastructure” of its data over the past few years has been “a key underpinning in our ability to effectively utilize AI tools today,” Chief Executive Ira Robbins said during today’s first-quarter earnings call. 

“Already, AI is helping our bankers prioritize opportunities and better understand client needs,” he said. “We have already utilized AI to improve access to our internal knowledge base, to rethink legacy back-office processes, including card service requests, certain elements of underwriting and risk monitoring, to accelerate data analytics and software development.” 

According to its earnings presentation, Valley Bank’s AI uses include:

• A voice agent that gives payment reminders to auto loan customers;
• Fraud tools to reduce false positives and enhance AML alert reviews; 
• AI-driven lead generation and customer insights to improve sales operations; and
• Agentic AI to automate underwriting and accelerate loan originations. 

“These are small examples of a much broader effort to unlock our associates to spend more time doing what they do best, building relationships and delivering high-value advice.” Robbins said.  

By the numbers

Morristown, N.J.-based Valley Bank reported in Q1:

• Total revenue increased 13% year over year to $540.3 million;
• Efficiency ratio was 53.1%, compared with 55.9% in Q1 2025; 
• Technology, equipment and furniture expenses rose 6.7% YoY to $31.9 million; and
• Net income surged 54.6% YoY to $163.9 million. 

Similar to its peers, Valley Bank is evaluating AI’s potential to replace certain roles to improve its efficiency ratio, Robbins said, noting that the bank’s headcount has declined by roughly 100 over the past year to 3,607. 

“As we think about the reduction in some of those roles, we’re definitely enhancing the opportunities and then reinvesting some of that back into AI that we think is going to be a lot more productive moving forward,” he said. 

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