Audit committee effectiveness and audit quality of listed insurance companies in Nigeria

This study examines the effects of audit committee effectiveness on audit quality of listed insurance companies in Nigeria using secondary data extracted from published audited annual reports and accounts of insurance companies in Nigeria. 15 companies out of the total 25 listed insurance companies in Nigeria with 150 firm-year observations for a period of 10 years, 2008-2017 form the study sample size. Ordinary least square (OLS) regression model was employed to analyze the data and test the hypotheses with the aid of STATA version 14. The result shows that audit committee meetings and audit committee independence have a positive and significant effect on audit quality of listed insurance companies in Nigeria. The other elements of audit committee effectiveness do not have a significant effect on audit quality of listed insurance companies in Nigeria. The study recommends that: (i) the board of directors of Nigerian insurance companies should review or revisit their policy on the number of meetings to change from a minimum of 4 and maximum of 8 meetings to a minimum of 6 and 10 maximum meetings per annual for audit committees. This is because regular meetings provide an opportunity for the audit committee to attend critical issues, which in turn improve audit quality; (ii) the regulatory authorities who are responsible for monitoring listed insurance companies in Nigeria should come up with policies or revisit the policy on audit committee size. To mandate all insurance companies to have a uniform maximum of 7 members for the audit committee in respective of the company's' size. This will go a long way in improving the monitoring capability of audit committee independence toward achieving audit quality of listed insurance companies in Nigeria.