Digital Finance and Audit Fees of Commercial Banks
CHEN Junmei1, FENG Junke2, QIU Juandong1
1. School of Economics and Management, Ningxia University, Yinchuan 750021,China; 2. School of Economics and Management, Northwest University, Xi’an 710000,China
Abstract Taking Chinese commercial banks from 2011 to 2021 as the research object, this paper explores the impact mechanism and transmission effect of digital finance on audit fees. Research finds that the audit fees of commercial banks will be increased in the initial stage of the development of digital finance. When digital finance reaches a certain level, the decline effect of audit fees caused by the enhancement of financial technology will exceed the increase of audit fees due to the increase of audit investment and audit risk, thereby reducing audit fees of commercial banks. This shows that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between digital finance and audit fees. Mechanism testing indicates that digital finance mainly acts on agency conflicts and information asymmetry to lead to changes in audit risks and costs, and finally affects audit fees. Heterogeneity analysis shows that when the audit subjects come from the four major domestic firms, the nonlinear effect of digital finance on audit fees is enhanced, and when the audit objects are listed banks and commercial banks with high capital adequacy ratio, their use of digital technology can have a more effective non-linear effect on audit fees. Therefore, when the degree of marketization and legal level of the region where commercial banks are located is higher, and the supervision of digital finance is more strict, the inverted U-shaped relationship between digital finance and audit fees is more significant. The conclusion enriches the research on the economic consequences of digital finance from the perspective of audit fees, and provides a reference for commercial banks to implement digital transformation strategies and CPA audit fee decision-making.
2024, Vol. 41 
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