Background: The audit report has for a long time been the subject of discussion with basis in the financial scandals that resulted in reduced confidence in the audit. Earlier changes have taken place over the years without standard setters succeeding in satisfying users' need for information. This has resulted in a decision from the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board to implement changes which include more entity-specific information. These changes are intended to make it easier for users, but since standard setters have previously overridden users' needs, it is appropriate to question whether the changes this time will have a significant impact on users’ decision making. Furthermore, research about the changes has been contradictory if they are of significance to users. The users this study is focused on is creditors. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to understand how the changes in the current audit report are perceived by the users and the underlying factors to these perceptions. Method: For the empirical basis, a qualitative approach has been used in which semi-structured interviews have been conducted with 10 respondents from the corporate sector at bank. The respondents are business advisors, credit analysts, managers and customer managers. Conclusion: The study’s result show that the changes in their entirety have not affected respondents’ decision making to a great extent. Although the entity-specific information has been shown to facilitate the users needs and reduced the information gap, the changes in general have had a slight practical impact. It is explained by the fact that most respondents do not work with listed companies and therefore are not affected by key audit matters. These respondents wish a similar section for the companies they are responsible for. Regarding remaining changes, more standardized text has been added, which means there is still information the users lack. Information the users lack is mainly entity-specific information regarding these changes, as well as specific information about the audit. It is therefore necessary to refrain from standardized language also in the other sections of the audit report. The standard setters are moving in the right direction in providing users with entity-specific information but have not effectively managed to reduce the information gap so far. The study also shows that the changes have not had any significant impact on the respondents’ confidence in the audit.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-67873 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Ekstrand, Nathalie, Wernebratt, Anna |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Handelshögskolan (from 2013), Karlstads universitet, Handelshögskolan (from 2013) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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