Research on the Relationship between Internal Control and Financial Performance of Listed Companies: Regulatory Effect Based on Institutional Investors

Purpose Internal control is an important factor to improve the level of corporate governance. High-quality internal control can effectively improve the operating efficiency of the company, ensure the company s operation is legal, assets are safe, financial reports and related information are true and complete, and promote the company to achieve its development strategy. This paper takes the five elements of internal control as effective evaluation content of internal control and studies the relationship between internal control and corporate financial performance. The external governance factor of the company, institutional investors, is used as a moderating variable to explore the influence of institutional investor on the relationship between internal control and financial performance, with a view to finding effective ways to improve the company’s operations and achieve sustainable development. Design/Methodology/Approach Based on the data of Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2019, this paper studies the relationship among internal control, institutional investors and corporate financial performance by taking internal control as independent variable, corporate financial performance as dependent variable and institutional investors as moderating variable. The evaluation data of the independent variable internal control in this study was provided by DIBO Company Risk Management Technology Co., Ltd. The data of the dependent variable corporate financial performance, the moderating variable institutional investors shareholding ratio, and the control variables Company size and asset liability ratio are obtained from GUOTAI AN database and supplemented by annual reports of listed companies s, etc. For data processing, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and regression analysis are carried out by using data statistical analysis software. Findings This study confirms that the internal control evaluation index is significantly and positively correlated with the corporate financial performance, and the shareholding of institutional investors is also significantly and positively correlated with the corporate financial performance, but the shareholding of institutional investors significantly reduces the promotion effect of internal control on the corporate financial performance. Research Implications This paper selects reasonable internal control evaluation indexes, puts forward theoretical hypotheses on the relationship between internal control, institutional investors and corporate financial performance, and constructs an empirical model for data testing and analysis. According to the empirical analysis conclusions, this paper puts forward relevant countermeasures to optimize corporate financial performance from the perspectives of internal control and institutional investors.