감사인 품질관리에 대한 공적규제와 회계정보의 가치관련성 (Public Regulation on Auditor’s Quality Control Systems and Value Relevance of Audited Accounting Information)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국회계학회
· 수록지 정보 : 회계학연구 / 37권 / 3호 / 1 ~ 39페이지
· 저자명 : 최정호, 이재은

초록

금융감독원(금감원) 및 미국 PCAOB 등 각국의 회계감독기구들은 최근 감사인의 품질관리에 대하여 종전의 자율감리체제에서 공적 규제로 정책을 변경하였다. 감사품질에 대한 공적 규제제도에서는 감독기관이 감사인의 품질감리를 직접 실시하며, 감사인의 등록을 의무화한다. 이러한 정책변경은 감사품질을 향상시킬 것이라는 기대 속에 이루어졌다. 실제로 선행연구(이재은 2011)는 금감원의 품질관리감리 대상 또는 외국 감독기구에 등록된 감사인의 감사품질(재량적 발생의 크기로 측정)이 그렇지 않은 경우 보다 더 양호함을 보고하였다. 그러나 감사품질에 관한 공적규제가 독립성 제고 등의 장점이 있지만 감리수행자의 전문성 부족과 규제비용의 증가와 같은 문제점이 있다는 주장이 제기된다(Pritchard and Puri 2006). 이런 측면에서 감사인 품질관리에 대한 공적규제로 정책전환은 그 효과를 다각적으로 검증할 필요가 있다. 본 연구는 감사인의 품질관리에 대한 공적 규제 여부에 따라 회계정보이용자들이 인식하는 회계정보의 가치관련성에 차이가 있는지를 조사한다. 구체적으로, 금감원의 직접 품질관리감리 대상 또는 외국 감독기구에 등록한 회계법인이 감사한 기업의 회계정보 가치관련성이 그렇지않은 기업과 차이가 있는지를 실증적으로 분석하였다. 연구결과, 금감원의 품질관리감리 대상 또는 외국회계감독기구에 등록한 감사인이 감사한 기업의 회계정보 중 순이익 정보는 그렇지 않은 기업보다 가치관련성이 더 높은 것으로 나타났다. 다만 금감원 품질관리 대상 또는 외국회계감독기구에 등록한 감사인이 감사한 기업만을 대상으로 제도변경 전과 후의 회계정보가치관련성을 비교한 결과에서는 금감원 품질관리감리 제도가 실시된 후에만 순이익의 가치관련성이 증가하였다. 이와 같은 연구결과는 투자자들이 공적규제 대상 감사인이 감사한 기업의 회계정보(순이익) 가치관련성을 그렇지 않은 기업보다 더 높게 인식함을 의미한다. 이는 회계이익정보의 가치관련성이 감소하고 있다는 증거를 제시한 최근의 연구(Dichev and Tang 2008)와 관련하여, 회계정보의 신뢰성 향상을 위하여 감사품질에 관한 공적규제로의 정책 전환이 타당성이 있음을 시사한다. 본 연구결과는 공적규제여부가 감사품질지표가 될 수 있음을 나타낸다는 점에서 감사인의 품질관리제도에 대한 향후 회계감독제도의 운영방향과 관련하여 정책적 시사점을 제공한다.

영어초록

Accounting information is to contribute to the efficient distribution of economic resources by resolving information asymmetry between management and external interested parties. To fully fulfill this function of accounting information, first of all, management has to maintain transparent accounting information, and auditors have to prudently audit the accounting information with professional due cares. Auditors' professional due cares in the audit processes depend on their quality control (QC) systems, which comprises entity-level QC systems and individual engagement level QC procedures.
In the past, such auditors' quality control systems are subject to self-regulation; i.e. the auditors' professional organizations such as the Korea Institute of Certified Public Accountants (KICPA) or the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) had performed peer-review processes to monitor whether each audit firms' quality control systems operate properly. Recently, such self-regulation on auditors' audit quality system has been replaced by the public scrutinies and monitoring such as supervisory reviews by the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) or inspections by the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) on auditors' self- quality control systems. The FSS is also considering introducing auditor registration systems in Korea as have been implemented by PCAOB and many other foreign country regulators.
These global changes are in line with the premise that auditor registration and regulatory authority’s investigation on the quality controls of the (registered) auditors would eventually improve audit quality. Actually, Lee (2011) has reported that audit quality of auditors subject to the FSS's quality control reviews or registered with foreign regulatory authorities are better than those not subject to such regulations. Meanwhile, there are many controversies on the effects of public regulation, comparing to self-regulation, such as whether it would improve independence or reduce professional competency of quality control reviewers, or cause increased costs. Therefore, effectiveness and results of conversion into public regulation on auditor's quality control should be evaluated in diverse aspects.
Prior studies made such evaluations using abnormal accruals, audit opinion types, auditor selection decisions and others. DeFond (2010) reviewed relevant literatures and proposed to evaluate trade-offs of enhanced independence and lack of professional competency resulting from regulatory changes related to auditors’ quality control systems. In this regard, we examine the effects of public regulation on auditor's quality control systems in terms of investors' perception of value relevance of accounting information. Specifically, we tested whether value relevance of accounting information audited by the auditors subject to the FSS's quality control reviews or registered with foreign regulatory authorities are different from those not subject to such regulations.
We found that earnings information audited by those auditors subject to the FSS's quality control reviews or registered with foreign regulatory authorities have incremental value relevance, which are consistent with the hypotheses of this study. Such results remain consistent in additional analyses with employing certain control variables (firm size, leverage and ROA). This result indicates that investors are highly recognizing value relevance of accounting information audited by the auditors who are subject to the FSS's quality control reviews or registered with the foreign regulatory authorities. Recent study (Dichev and Tang 2008) reported that earning's value relevance is continuously decreasing over years, for which we need to develop an strategy to respond to the trends. This result gives practical implications that improving reporting credibility by conversion to or enhancements of public regulations.
Meanwhile, additional analysis for comparison of before and after the regulation changes in the FSS's quality control reviews or registration with the foreign regulatory authorities shows that such incremental value relevance of earnings exists only for the changes of regulation for the FSS's quality control review. We expect such difference in the results would have come from the environmental factors with respect to the accounting regulation changes. We estimate that change of the FSS's quality control review program has been well recognized by the investors upon implementation of the regulatory changes, but the auditors' registration with foreign regulatory authorities would not have been since such efforts were well known to the auditors but were out of the sights of the Korean investors. i.e. such regulation changes in the foreign countries and subsequent Korean auditor's registrations therewith began in 2004 when the auditors were not aware of the details.
Another additional analysis for Non-Big 4 samples, we found that, with respect to the FSS's quality control review and registration with the foreign regulatory authorities, earnings of the financial statements audited by such auditors have significant positive value relevance, which is also consistent with the results for all Big 4 and Non-Big 4 auditor samples. This finding is consistent with the prior study (Lee 2011) which reported that auditors paying more voluntary quality control efforts show better audit quality. Also, the above results for Non-Big 4 auditors indicate that the investors are assuming such voluntary efforts importantly as well.
This has regulatory implications that various audit quality indicators which would represent audit quality of the auditors, and, also, should be communicated (or disclosed) to the investors in a proper and timely manner. Our findings make some important contributions to the literature and regulatory bodies in that both conversion into public regulations on auditors' quality control and the auditors making public regulations on auditor's quality control are perceived positively by the investors.

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