Prior to the 2000s, internal control had not been among the high priority issues in the management’s agenda. Since then, however, it has become one of the hottest issues, and has received a significant attention as the means of improving the transparency, sustainability, and competitiveness of a company.
The objectives of this paper are to examine if there has been any noticeable changes in the level of internal controls of Korean companies before and after the 2010, and to analyze the underlying drivers and issues thereto.
Accounting manipulation and moral hazard were among the factors to cause the Korean financial crisis in 1997 and 2008. Since then, the capital market has had a strong pressure on Korean companies to enhance the transparency of management and accounting while the government has made the laws, requirements, and recommendations to alleviate the moral hazard problems of management and enhance the accounting transparency. Both market and government have driven companies to put more priority on the reliability of financial reporting and the compliance of applicable laws and regulations. Thereby, the market and governmental forces has led companies to enhance the level of internal controls which contribute to the reliability of financial reporting and the compliance.
The pressure on companies to enhance the level of internal controls may be different across industries. The capital market and government experiencing the severe financial crisis in 1997 and 2008 put even more pressure on financial companies such as banks to upgrade the reliability of financial reporting and the compliance of regulations to the global level than on non-financial companies.
A survey is performed on the changes in the level of internal controls of 54 major companies consisting of 10 financial and 44 non-financial companies in Korea. The survey results show that the average level of internal controls of Korean companies has noticeably improved and that the change in the level of control environment factor is higher than that of IT control factor. The analysis on the industry differences shows that financial companies increased the level of control environment factor more than non-financial companies did while non-financial companies upgraded the level of IT control factor more than financial companies did relatively.
Among internal control categories, the most improved area since the economic crisis is “Risk Assessment.” The global best practices for risk management have been developed primarily in the financial industry and then spread to other industries. The general level of control practices of Korean companies has been improving significantly, but still appears below the global advanced practices.