핵심감사제 도입이 재무분석가 이익예측에 미치는 영향 = The Association between Key Audit Matter and Analyst Forecast

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The traditional audit reports consist of audit opinion, responsibility, and financial statement. However, recently this format is criticized that it often causes expectation gap between auditor and information users and the understandability of information is below than expected, and therefore needs improvement.
PCAOB(2007) also comments the current audit reports should include more relevant discussion about the audit procedure, rather than current simple pass/fail opinion. Under this circumstances, the global regulatory authorities spur the research and development of audit report revision, one of which is Key Audit Matter(KAM, hereafter). The auditor select KAM after discussion with internal monitoring instruments such as audit committee, and includes explanation, reason, procedure and results of selected KAM in audit report.
In Korea, KAM is introduced in the order-made production industry at first in 2016, and gradually adopted in all listed firms until 2020. Financial Supervisory Service suggests that the purpose of KAM is to provide more useful information to audit report users by adding the disclosure and evaluation on key business risk and therefore to enhance the information value of audit report. Therefore it is meaningful a t this moment to discuss whether KAM adopted i n Korea provides m ore useful information as intended. The prior literature which investigates the effect of KAM introduction mainly focuses on audit quality and stock market reaction. In this study, we empirically analyse whether KAM contributes to reduce the information asymmetry and enhance the usefulness of audit reports, as intended, to audit report users, especially financial analysts who is professional financial information users.
Analysts produce the investment opinion and earning forecast using private information and disclosed financial information. Also they evaluate the reliability of financial statement produced by management and auditor. Their opinion and analysis affect the capital market, by being used by investors as key reference. Therefore this study contributes to the literature and regulatory authorities whether the KAM achieve what is intended by suggesting the impact on analysts forecast properties.
Using the listed firm-years which adopt KAM from 2016-2021, we examine whether the adoption of KAM and number of KAM affects the number of analyst and forecast error. As a result of analysis, first, we find no significant association between KAM and number of analysts in general, but in small sized firm the number analysts reduced in firms which adopt KAM. This imply that KAM disclosure may confuse the information users in low-quality information environment. Second, the analyst forecast error in general increases after KAM adoption, especially big sized firm. Also the more KAM categories are, the less the number of analysts and the higher the analyst forecast errors are. These results may indicate that the excessive information makes the decision making more difficult. Lastly, the changes in number of KAM category compared to last year is negatively associated with number of analyst in small firm, and positively associated with earning forecast error. This results are rubost after excluding the period which could be affected by COVID19.
This study has some caveats. First, the sample period may not be enough to analyze depending on the firm size, because the KAM adoption is finalized in 2020. Second, we acknowledge that the results is due to another economic reasons which we fail to find. Lastly the detailed characteristics of KAM category may affect the analysts, which i s not captured i n this study. Future studies could extend this study by adding the sample period and more detailed KAM information.

국문 초록 (Abstract)

국내에서 핵심감사제는 회계투명성 및 분식회계 문제가 제기된 수주산업을 대상으로 2016년 우선시행된 이후 2018년부터 2020년까지 단계적으로 전체 상장사에 도입되었다. 도입된 핵심감사제는 개정 국제감사보고기준의 주요감사사항보고를 한국 실정에 맞게 수정 및 변형한 것으로, 기업의 주요 경영위험에 대한 정보를 제공함으로써 감사보고서의 유용성 및 정보가치를 제고하기 위한 제도이다. 이에 본 연구에서는 핵심감사제가 실제로 주요 재무정보이용자에게 유용한 정보를 제공했는지 검증하기위하여 전문적인 정보 이용자인 재무분석가를 대상으로 실증분석하였다. 그 결과 전반적으로 핵심감사사항 공시는 재무분석가 수에는 영향을 미치지 않았으나 정보환경이 상대적으로 좋지 않은 작은 규모의 기업의 경우에는 핵심감사사항을 공시하는 경우 재무분석가의 수가 오히려 감소하는 결과를 보였다. 또한 핵심감사제를 도입한 경우 재무분석가의 이익예측오차는 증가하였으며, 이러한 결과는 규모가큰 기업에서 더 뚜렷하게 나타났다, 마지막으로 핵심감사사항 항목 수 및 변동을 검토한 결과 항목 수가 많을수록, 그리고 항목수가 전년도 대비 증가하였을수록 이익예측오차는 증가하고 규모가 작은 기업의 재무분석가 수도 감소하였다. 이러한 결과는 코로나로 인한 영향을 제외하기 위하여 해당 기간을제외한 경우에도 강건하게 나타났다. 본 연구는 핵심감사사항이 도입 의도대로 감사보고서의 유용성제고에 도움이 되었는지를 실증적으로 검토하였다는 점에서 유관기관 및 관련 연구에 시사점을 제시한다.