Cloud Accounting and the Quality of Financial Reports of Selected Banks in Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of cloud computing on the quality of financial reports in selected deposit money banks in Nigeria. Software as a service (Saas) and Infrastructure as a service (Iaas), were the cloud computing proxies employed to ascertain their effect on financial reporting quality. Financial reporting quality (FRQT) was measured in terms of qualitative characteristics of financial report as provided by IASB conceptual framework. The research design adopted in this study was survey design because the data used was primary. The population of the study consisted of 450 respondents drawn from the ten different deposit money banks in Akwa Ibom State. However, the sample size of this study was 212 determined using Taro Yamane formula. Primary data were obtained through Likert 5-points structured questionnaire. In order to examine the cause-effect relationships between the dependent variable and independent variables as well as to test the formulated hypotheses, the study relied on a robust OLS regression analysis. The results obtained from the robust OLS regression analysis revealed that software has a statistically positive but insignificant effect on the financial reporting quality; infrastructure has a statistically positive and significant effect on the financial reporting quality. Thus, we concluded that cloud computing has significant effect on the financial reporting quality of deposit money banks in Nigeria. Based, on these findings, we recommended that banks should adopt cloud computing to accelerate innovation, drive business agility, streamline cost and most importantly increase the financial reporting quality.