재무보고 적시성이 기업의 신용평가에 미치는 영향 - 감사보고시차를 중심으로 - (The Effect of Timeliness of Financial Reporting on the Credit Rating)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국회계학회
· 수록지 정보 : 회계저널 / 25권 / 3호 / 131 ~ 156페이지
· 저자명 : 김태동, 배창현

초록

본 연구는 감사보고시차로 측정된 재무보고 적시성이 다음연도 해당 기업의 신용평가에 어떠한 영향을 미치는지 살펴보는데 목적이 있다. 즉, 재무보고 적시성이 회계정보의 신뢰성과 어떠한 관계를 갖는지 분석하였다. 재무보고 적시성의 대용치(proxy)로 측정되고 있는 감사보고시차의 경우, 다른 기업에 비해 길다는 것(다른 기업에 비해 적시성이 낮다는 것)은 외부감사인의 노력이 많이 투입되었다는 증거로 해석될 수 있으며, 이는 기업의 위험이 상대적으로 높다는 것일 수 있다. 하지만, 감사보고시차의 증가가 상대적으로 외부감사인의 노력(시간)이 많이 투입된 결과로써 감사품질의 향상으로 이어진다면 이는 기업의 위험을 감소시킬 수 있는 요인으로 작용될 수 있다. 따라서 이러한 상반된 추론을 분석하기 위해 본 연구에서는 귀무가설 형태로 살펴보았다. 분석결과, t기 감사보고시차(결산일에서 감사보고서일까지의 누적기간)가 길어질수록 t+1기의 신용평가(신용점수)에 부정적인 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 이는 감사보고시차가 커질수록 기업의 위험이 예상한 수준보다 높다는 것일 수 있기 때문에 증가된 기업위험에 대해 시장에서는 부정적인 평가를 하는 것으로 판단되며, 결과적으로 기업의 입장에서는 재무보고 적시성 향상을 위해 노력해야 함을 본 연구에서는 제시하고 있다. 추가분석 결과를 살펴보면, 감사시차(결산일에서 감사보고서 제출일까지의 누적기간)가 길수록, 외부감사시간이 길수록, t+1기의 신용평가에는 부정적인 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 아울러, 외국인지분율과 감사보고시차에 대한 상호작용 변수의 경우 통계적으로 유의한 음(-)의 값이 나타났는데, 이는 외국인투자자의 감시기능 역할에 대한 긍정적인 신호(signal)가 재무보고의 적시성 지연에 따른 기업의 위험을 감소시킨 것으로 해석된다.

영어초록

This study examines the relation between credit rating of the firms and Audit Report Lag (ARL), measured as the difference in the timeliness of accounting information.
Credit ratings are generally known to be considering all the factors affecting the company's ability to repay debt that are internal and external factors (management risk, industry risk, business and operating risks, financial risks, affiliation risk, etc.) of firm management (Lee et al. 2007). Koh et al.(2013) find that credit rating is negatively associated with enforcement action or not. This study result implies that credit rating agencies when rating firms consider not only the financial information provided by firms but also the information that might cause enforcement action. Further, credit analysts do negative ratings on real activity earnings management of the firms (Lee and Kim 2011), and there is significant positive relationship between conservatism and KIS credit score (Jeon and Lee 2010). The timeliness of financial reporting is a basic requirement for the information usefulness. Prior studies (Givoly and Palmon 1982; Kim 1996) have used ARL as a proxy for timeliness of accounting information and auditor's audit effort (Sohn et al. 2013). ARL is the period from the fiscal year-end to the date on which the audit report is released (Ettredge et al. 2006). According to the prior studies, auditors exert more effort into audit procedures when the audit risk is high. Exerting more effort to audit procedures (assume that more audit hours cause to delay in ARL) leads to higher audit quality (Palmrose 1986; Choi 1999; Kwon et al. 2005; Caramanis and Lennox 2008) and longer ARL which then might affect the reliability of financial statements.
To sum up, ARL that is longer than any other firms, which means reduced in timeliness compared to other firms, could be interpreted as evidence that auditor exerts more effort (audit hours) in the audit procedure, so the risk of such firm is relatively high. However, if an increase in ARL due to auditor's more effort (audit hours) in the audit procedure resulted in improvement of audit quality, than it could be a factor that might reduce firm risk. As there are conflicting views, we use the null hypothesis to conduct the empirical analysis of our study.
Our sample consists of non-financial firms that are listed in the Korea Exchange (KRX) from 2005 to 2010 and whose fiscal year-end is on December 31. Firms with no financial information in Kis-Value database and with no publicly available data for audit report date in DART System of Korean Financial Supervisory Services are eliminated. We use 1% winsorization to all our research variables to exclude the effect of extreme data on our results. The final sample consists of 3,280 firm-years. KIS credit score is used as the dependent variable in an OLS regression. It is scored using credit valuation model developed by Korea Investors Service (KIS) and composed of 1 to 10 points. For the ratings, more favorable (unfavorable) firms are rated close to 1 point (10 points). We also used credit rating of bonds as our proxy for the robustness of our result, provided by 3 authorized credit rating agencies in Korea (NICE Investors Service Co., Korea Investors Service, Inc. and Korea Ratings).
Our empirical results show that longer ARL negatively affects the credit rating of the following year. This finding suggests that longer ARL might mean firm risk higher than the expected level and the market gives a negative assessment to the increased firm risk. As a result, this finding suggests that firms need to exert more effort to improve the timeliness of financial reporting. The result of our supplementary analyses suggests that longer ARL and audit hour negatively affect the credit rating of the following year. This result supports the result of our main analyses thus increase the robustness of our study. Finally, we find that foreign investors positively affect the relationship between ARL and credit score. This may be construed that monitoring role of foreign investors works as a positive signal in the market reducing the firm risk caused by delay in the timeliness of accounting information.
In addition to the line of credit rating research, this study suggests that timeliness of accounting information could be a determinant. The results of our study have following implications to firms and investors. To firms, our finding indicates that the improvement of timeliness of accounting information is needed for the betterment of credit ratings of following year. Further, delay in the timeliness of accounting information could negatively affect the credit rating of such firm, thus the investors could use this data as investment information.

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