VALLEY NATIONAL BANCORP 10-Q

Item 4. Controls and Procedures (a) Disclosure controls and procedures. Valley maintains disclosure controls and procedures which, consistent with Rule 13a-15(e) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (Exchange Act), are defined to mean controls and other procedures that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed in the reports that Valley files or submits under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rules and forms, and to ensure that such information is accumulated and communicated to Valley’s management, including Valley’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO), as appropriate, to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure. Valley’s CEO and CFO, with the assistance of other members of Valley’s management, have evaluated the effectiveness of Valley’s disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Rule 13a-15(e) or Rule 15d-15(e) under the Exchange Act) as of the end of the period covered by this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. Based on such evaluation, Valley’s CEO and CFO have concluded that Valley’s disclosure controls and procedures were effective as of the end of the period covered by this report. (b) Changes in internal controls over financial reporting. Beginning January 1, 2020, Valley adopted ASU No. 2016-13, “Financial Instruments – Credit Losses (Topic 326): Measurement of Credit Losses on Financial 90 Instruments”. Valley implemented changes to the policies, processes, and controls over the estimation of the allowance for credit losses to support the adoption of ASU No. 2016-13. Many controls under this new standard remained unchanged under prior GAAP. New controls were established over the review of economic forecasting projections obtained externally. Except as related to the adoption of ASU No. 2016-13, Valley’s CEO and CFO have also concluded that there have not been any changes in Valley’s internal control over financial reporting in the quarter ended September 30, 2020 that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, Valley’s internal control over financial reporting. Valley has not experienced any material impact to Valley’s internal controls over financial reporting due to the fact that most of Valley’s employees responsible for financial reporting are working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Valley is continually monitoring and assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Valley’s internal controls over financial reporting to minimize the impact to their design and operating effectiveness. Valley’s management, including the CEO and CFO, does not expect that our disclosure controls and procedures or our internal controls over financial reporting will prevent all errors and all fraud. A system of internal control, no matter how well conceived and operated, provides reasonable, not absolute, assurance that the objectives of the system of internal control are met. The design of a system of internal control reflects resource constraints and the benefits of controls must be considered relative to their costs. Because there are inherent limitations in all control systems, no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that all control issues and instances of fraud, if any, within Valley have been or will be detected. These inherent limitations include the realities that judgments in decision-making can be faulty and that breakdowns occur because of a simple error or mistake. Controls can be circumvented by the individual acts of some persons, by collusion of two or more people, or by management override of the control. The design of any system of internal control is based in part upon certain assumptions about the likelihood of future events. There can be no assurance that any design will succeed in achieving its stated goals under all future conditions; over time, controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions or deterioration in the degree of compliance with the policies or procedures. Because of the inherent limitations in a cost-effective control system, misstatements due to error or fraud may occur and not be detected. PART II - OTHER INFORMATION Item 1. Legal Proceedings In the normal course of business, we may be a party to various outstanding legal proceedings and claims. There have been no material changes in the legal proceedings, if any, previously disclosed under Part I, Item 3 of Valley’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019.