The goal of the submitted thesis "Audit of Commercial Insurance Company" is to introduce the process of the audit of the insurance company. Theoretical part of the thesis contains a general introduction to audit, general auditors procedures and audit legislation. Practical part describes the audit of commercial insurance company with main focus on audit of the financial investments, gross premiums written, technical reserves and claim payments.

The large accounting firms recently created U.S.-based audit support groups to advance efficiency and consistency by applying firm-wide methodologies and standard audit procedures in judgmental/routine accounting areas. These groups—hereafter called the centralized audit team (CAT)—service several engagements simultaneously and execute procedures independently without core teams' oversight. However, the core teams are required to review and finalize the CAT's completed assessments and audit conclusions. This authority can result in unintended consequences, such as the core team discounting the results of the CAT's testing, which can reduce consistency across engagements. I investigate this concern by conducting an experiment to examine if the core team's review of the procedures used by the CAT and the client's views about the CAT's evidence requests influence core team reviewers' evaluations of the CAT's work. I predict and find that dissimilarities between the nature and extent of audit procedures used by core teams in prior audits and those currently used by CATs create an association effect such that reviewers are more likely to disagree with the CAT's conclusions. Inconsistent with my prediction that core teams will feel the need to please their clients, I find marginal evidence that reviewers are more likely to agree with the CAT's conclusions when clients complain versus when clients do not complain about CATs' excessive evidence requests. I fail to find evidence of an interaction effect. This study contributes to existing research and practice by highlighting conditions that can affect firms' ability to obtain their anticipated consistency and efficiency goals because core teams may discount the CAT's audit approach. / Doctor of Philosophy / Audit clients hire external audit firms to evaluate their financial information and provide reasonable assurance to the public that the financial information is presented in accordance with U.S. accounting standards, the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Once a client hires a firm, the firm assigns a core team to the audit engagement. The core team performs interim and year-end audit procedures to assess the client's financial statements. To ensure that core teams conduct a sufficient assessment that meets U.S.-based auditing standards, firms employ firm-wide audit methodologies and standard tools that aid auditors in planning, performing, and documenting their procedures. However, inspections conducted by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) indicate that some core teams do not adequately follow firms' methodologies, often leading to engagements that do not meet certain requirements in the auditing standards. These types of discrepancies identified during PCAOB inspections could lead to monetary fines and damage firms' reputations. To help combat these issues, audit firms have begun employing Centralized Audit Teams (CATs) whose objective is to assist core teams by using firm-wide methodologies to perform standard procedures on certain audit areas within engagements. By applying standard procedures to multiple audit engagements simultaneously, CATs have the potential to improve the firms' audit consistency and efficiency. While the CAT plans, performs, and documents its audit procedures in the assigned area, the core team remains ultimately responsible for the overall audit. Therefore, the core team must review the CAT's work to ensure they completed sufficient and appropriate procedures. Existing audit research documents that different conditions within an audit can affect reviewers' judgment. For instance, a reviewer is less likely to scrutinize and disagree with the preparer's audit conclusion when the reviewer is familiar with the preparer. In my dissertation, I examine if certain factors that occur during CAT audits impact core team reviewers' judgment, lowering the possibility that firms will achieve their audit efficiency and consistency goals across engagements. Extant research posits that some core teams choose to follow firm standard methodologies while others choose to deviate from the methodologies and perform client-specific procedures. Once the core team chooses to perform standard or client-specific procedures, it does not often change procedure type. Thus, the standard procedures that CATs employ may be similar or dissimilar to the procedures that core teams performed in prior years. In this dissertation, I conduct an experiment using experienced external auditors to determine whether the similarity between core teams' prior audit procedures and CATs' standard procedures impact core team auditors' judgments when reviewing CATs' work. I predict that core team reviewers will form favoritism towards CATs when CATs perform procedures that are similar as opposed to dissimilar to the procedures that their team utilized in prior years. Therefore, the core team reviewers will be less likely to scrutinize and disagree with the CAT's audit conclusion. Audit research also indicates that clients complain when auditors inconvenience them in hopes that the complaint will cause the auditors to behave in a manner that pleases them. For example, clients may complain when auditors ask them to provide a significant amount of evidence to support the reporting of a certain account balance. Since CATs follow standard procedures, they make similar evidence requests to all clients; however, these requests may differ from the core team's prior requests (i.e., clients should be more accustomed to the core team's prior requests). This dissimilarity may cause clients to complain. I predict that core team reviewers are more likely to attempt to please their client by adjusting a CAT's audit conclusion in a manner that favors the client when the client complains about the CAT compared to when the client does not complain. However, prior research also implies that reviewers are more likely to react to a client's complaint if they believe it is authentic. Therefore, I predict that core team reviewers are more likely to adjust a CAT's audit conclusion when the client complains about a CAT that conducts dissimilar versus similar procedures relative to the core team's prior procedures. The results of my study imply that when the CAT's standard audit procedures are dissimilar to the core team's prior procedures, reviewers are more likely to overrule CAT's audit recommendations by making significant changes to the audit results. These results are driven by the reviewer's perception that the CAT is more competent to audit the client's financial information accurately when the CAT uses similar procedures. I also find marginal evidence that when a client complains about the CAT, core team reviewers are more likely to agree with the CAT's conclusions even though the conclusions do not favor the client. I fail to find evidence that reviewers are even more likely to disagree with the CAT when the client complains, and the CAT's procedures are dissimilar as opposed to similar. My study sheds light on how CAT audit engagement conditions can influence core team reviewers' judgment. Given that firms have made significant investments to create and employ CATs, this dissertation provides insight to audit practitioners by highlighting engagement factors that lower firms' ability to achieve their related efficiency and consistency goals.

近年國內企業發生財務報表不實的舞弊，大多先涉及虛偽銷貨，爾後再透過各種手法加以掩飾。過去學者的研究指出，當財務報表舞弊為虛偽交易類型時，會計師被告之機會較大。當受查者的交易型態變得複雜，會計師查核財務報表之外在不確定性增加，審計失敗的機會增加；會計師面臨的審計風險變高，會計師事務所之營業風險提高。 因此，本研究為降低會計師未來因虛偽銷貨而冒之法律風險而分析我國上市櫃公司虛偽銷貨舞弊之手法及警訊，俾助會計師得評估虛偽銷貨之風險，規劃可偵出虛偽銷貨之查核程序。 本研究透過個案分析及問卷調查，歸納出以下結論： 1.目前企業進行虛偽銷貨之手法，皆以關係人為銷貨對象，可能以同一批貨在關係人間買賣（如勁永），或以假冒之商品出貨（如博達），亦可能根本沒出貨，以虛假之發票及資金的流動製造銷貨之假象（如皇統）。 2.企業於舞弊期間之警訊，則以營業項目及融資項目之變化最為明顯。前者包含企業於舞弊期間銷貨予關係人之比率異常增加，或外銷比率或外銷地區經年改變，亦可能主要客戶及供應商交易情形（如銷貨金額占總銷貨淨額百分比）變化大；後者則包含公司規模小，卻發行ECB，且發行條件異常（如閉鎖期過短），或該公司於舞弊期間之海外存款之比率異常增加。 3.針對虛偽銷貨會計師查核程序之規劃，則應先辨認出關係人，再規劃辨認異常物流狀況之查核程序。 / In recent years, management fraud in financial statements has been occurred in Taiwan. These reporting frauds were often related to fictitious sales, and then covered the frauds in other ways. Prior studies examined that auditors have higher risk of litigation when the fraud type is fictitious transactions. Auditors are more likely to be sued when the financial statement frauds are of a common variety, and then higher risk of managing the firms. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the patterns of fraud schemes used by management to perpetrate and conceal fraud and finds out the proper audit procedure of fictitious sales to decline the risk of litigation. After a series case-by-case analysis and questionnaire investigation, it can be concluded as follows: 1.The patterns of fraud schemes in fictitious sales used by management are selling the inventories to related parties. For instance, managements may transact the same inventories between related parties(勁永), sell the fake products(博達), or they might create fake documents such as fake purchase orders, fake invoices and fake shipping documents to conceal fictitious sales(皇統). 2.The most common implication of financial statement fraud is operating and financing activities. The former includes the increasing rate of transaction between the management and related party or varieties of overseas sales and areas with sales aboard; the latter contains the small-sized-firms issued ECB with abnormal conditions, and abnormal increasing ratio of overseas deposit during the fraud. 3.The audit procedure of fictitious sales, we should find out the related parties, and then draw up the audit procedure of indentifying abnormal transaction.