Audit Committee and Financial Reporting Quality of Listed Insurance Firms in Nigeria

The aim of this study is to examine the impact of audit committee attributes on the financial reporting quality of listed insurance companies in Nigeria. The research employed an ex-post-facto design. Empirical analysis was conducted on 13 listed insurance firms in Nigeria over the period of 2012-2016. The proxy of the dependent variable of the study which is financial reporting quality is total accruals while the independent variables of the study were audit committee size, audit committee composition, audit committee meetings and audit committee gender diversity. Using ordinary least squares (OLS) multivariate regression analysis, the study observed that audit committee meetings and audit committee composition has no impact on firm financial reporting quality. On the other hand, audit committee size and audit committee diversity have a positive impact on firm financial reporting quality. The control variable (size) is found to be strongly related with financial reporting quality. The paper recommended that the board of directors of insurance companies should take measures directed towards increasing the number of audit committee size and ensure richer gender diversity in the audit committee. Such will have a positive impact on financial reporting quality of insurance companies. It is also recommended that policy makers like the financial reporting council of Nigeria (FRCN) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should review their code of corporate governance to increase the size of audit committee and encourage gender diversity in the composition of audit committee.