Valley National Bank, the wholly owned subsidiary of Valley National Bancorp, announced the appointment of Sanjay Sidhwani as its first Chief Data and Analytics Officer. In this role, Sidhwani will oversee the bank’s data strategy and data management capabilities including enterprise data architecture, data platforms and services, data governance, data risk and data literacy. He will also be responsible for building out the bank’s advanced analytics capabilities to drive strategic objectives.

“Sanjay has extensive experience and expertise in driving digital transformation and delivering measurable business results through advanced analytics,” said Russ Barrett, Valley’s Executive Vice President, Chief Transformation Officer. “Today, data and analytics play a significant role in the way we develop and manage our business strategies and Sanjay will have a major impact in building our capabilities and data-driven culture.”

Sidhwani has more than 15 years of experience in banking/financial services and comes to Valley from Santander Bank NA where he was EVP Data and Analytics and was responsible for driving results through actionable business intelligence and deep customer insights. Prior to Santander, he had analytics leadership roles at KeyBank and GE Capital/Synchrony Financial.

He has a BS in Engineering, Mechanical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani and an MBA in Marketing and Operations Research from Gies College of Business, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He serves on the board of the Children’s Learning Centers of Fairfield County, CT.