지정감사인의 감사품질과 품질관리수준의 관계

2014년 말의 외감법 개정으로 감사인 지정제도가 대폭 확대되면서 지정감사인 배정방안에 대해서 도 다양한 개선의견이 개진되고 있다. 본 연구는 지정감사인 배정에 있어 회계법인의 품질관리수준 을 연계시키는 것이 합리적인 개선방안이 될 수 있는지를 검토하기 위해 지정감사인의 품질관리수 준과 감사품질의 관련성을 실증적으로 분석한다. 금융감독원의 품질관리감리를 수감한 62개 회계법인이 2005년부터 2013년까지 수행한 지정감사업 무 222건을 대상으로 수행한 주요 분석결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 가설 검증에 앞서 지정감사인과 비지정감사인의 감사품질을 비교한 결과 선행연구와 유사하게 지정감사인의 감사품질이 전반적으로 비지정감사인에 비해서 좋은 것으로 나타난다. 이는 지정제도의 확대가 감사품질 향상 및 회계투명 성 제고에 기여할 수 있는 정책임을 시사하는 결과이다. 둘째, 지정사유를 고려하지 않은 전체 분석 에서는 지정감사인의 품질관리수준과 감사품질 간에 유의한 관련성이 없는 것으로 나타난다. 그러나 지정사유를 구분하여 분석하면, ‘감리조치’를 사유로 지정된 경우에는 품질관리수준이 높은 회계법인 의 감사품질이 그렇지 않은 회계법인보다 유의하게 높은 것으로 나타난다. 이러한 결과는 감사인의 독립성이 확보되는 지정감사의 경우에는 회계법인의 품질관리수준에 따른 감사품질의 차이가 두드 러지지 않지만, ‘감리조치’와 같이 특히 위험이 높은 일부 지정감사에서는 회계법인의 품질관리수준 에 따라 차별적인 감사품질이 나타나는 것으로 해석된다. 본 연구는 지정감사인의 감사품질을 회계법인의 품질관리수준과 연계하여 분석한 첫 번째 시도라 는 점에서 의미가 있다. 아울러 감사인 지정사유에 따라 회계법인의 품질관리수준과 감사품질 간의 관계가 달리 나타나는 실증분석 결과는 회계법인의 품질관리수준을 감사인 지정요건 중 하나로 고 려할 경우 감사인 지정사유와 연계하여 고려할 필요가 있음을 시사한다.

Recently, a series of accounting scandals including many savings banks, Tongyang group, Hyosung group, and Moneual, has raised serious concerns about audit quality and transparency of financial reporting of firms. To address the demand for improvement in audit quality and transparency of financial reporting, the government reformed the auditor designation system. The academics and the media have argued that audit failures in Korea are mainly due to excessive competition among auditors, which in turn leads to audit fee discounts and impairment of auditor independence. The auditors designated by the regulatory authority is likely to be more independent of clients than the auditors chosen by the clients and therefore provide higher quality audit. Prior research documents ample evidence that the auditor designation system improves audit quality. By the end of 2014, the auditor designation system was reformed to substantially expand the scope of auditor designation. Under the new auditor designation system, more companies are subject to auditor designation and how to assign auditors to those firms is very important for the successful implementation of the new system. Since the purpose of the expansion of auditor designation is to improve audit quality by appointing independent auditors, the assignment criteria need to consider factors reflecting audit quality. Prior research shows that the accounting firms which receive favorable ratings in the quality control inspections by the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) or the Korean Institute of Certified Public Accountants provide higher-quality audit than other accounting firms(Kim and Cheon 2010; Paek and Yoo 2011; Hwang et al. 2011). Thus, our study explores whether the strength of quality control systems of accounting firms can be considered as part of the assignment criteria by examining the relationship between the quality control strength of designated auditors and audit quality. On the one hand, designated auditors with strong quality control systems are likely to provide high-quality audit, consistent with the findings of previous studies. On the other hand, auditor designation safeguards auditor independence and therefore all designated auditors may provide high quality audit regardless of the strength of their quality control systems. If the latter is the case, the quality control strength of designated auditors may not be significantly associated with their audit quality. Therefore, this study investigates the relationship between the audit quality of designated auditors and their quality control strength in order to understand whether it is reasonable to consider the quality control strength of accounting firms in assigning auditors to companies subject to auditor designation. Our sample consists of 222 firm-years audited by designated auditors during 2005-2013. During the sample period, 62 designated auditors underwent quality control inspections by FSS. We measure the quality control strength of audit firms using the FSS inspection results. The major findings of the study are as follows: First, we find that designated auditors generally provide higher quality audit than non-designated auditors, which corroborates the findings of prior research. This result suggests that the expansion of auditor designation is likely to contribute to improvement in audit quality and thereby accounting transparency. Second, we do not find the significant relationship between the quality control strength of designated auditors and their audit quality for the overall sample. However, when we incorporate reasons for designation into our analysis, we observe different results. The quality control strength of accounting firms is positively associated with audit quality and significant for auditors designated for the reason of GAAP violations. Contrarily, the quality control strength of accounting firms is not significantly related to audit qualit