본 연구의 목적은 상장기업 및 일부 비상장기업들에 적용되고 있는 내부회계관리제도의 검토보수가 감사보수와 차별적인 요인에 의해 설명되는가를 내부회계관리제도검토보수 자료를 이용하여 분석하는 것이다. 2004년부터 국내 기업들에게 적용되기 시작한 내부회계관리제도의 검토는 내용상 외부감사의 내부통제제도의 평가와 중첩되는 부분이 많고, 합리적 수준의 감사위험을 전제로 이루어지는 외부감사에 비해 내부회계관리제도검토에 대한 위험은 현저하게 작으므로 감사대상회사의 특성과 보수 결정요인간의 관계를 파악하기가 용이하다. 따라서 본 논문에서는 국내 최초로 내부회계관리제도검토보수 자료를 이용하여 기업 특성변수들의 내부회계관리제도검토보수에 대한 설명력을 검토하고, 동일한 변수들의 감사보수에 대한 설명력 결과와 비교해 본다. 내부회계관리제도검토보수 결정모형을 감사보수 결정모형과 비교한 결과, 전자에서는 소송위험변수, 사외이사비율, 경영자 유형, 대주주지분율이 유의한 설명력을 가지는 것에 비해 후자에서는 소송위험변수와 대주주지분율만이 유의한 설명력을 보였다. 또한 기업규모, 자산증가율, 자회사 수 등과 같이 기업의 구조를 나타내는 변수들은 감사보수 결정모형에서는 설명력을 가지지만 내부회계관리제도검토보수 결정모형에서는 상대적으로 설명력을 덜 가지는 것으로 나타났다. 상기한 두 가지 결과는 감사위험을 통제해야 하는 외부감사의 경우에는 기업규모와 같은 구조변수들이 더 설명력을 갖지만 한계적 지불의사를 나타내는 내부회계관리제도검토보수 결정모형에서는 소송위험변수, 사외이사비율, 경영자유형, 대주주지분율과 같은 clientelle 변수들이 더 설명력을 가짐을 시사한다.
The present paper, using the undisclosed internal control over financial reporting(ICFR) review fee data, investigates whether firm characteristic variables exhibit differential explanatory power over audit fees despite their many overlapping features. Given that Korean firms started to adopt actively the ICFR system since 2004, it has reached a critical juncture in its effort to evaluate empirically the effectiveness of the adopted system. Also, unlike the external audit service in which the targeted audit risk should come into play, ICFR review is relatively free from such audit risk in analyzing the relationship between ICFR review fee and its determining firm characteristics. Our study, which examined cross-sectional determinants of ICFR review fee and wether there exists substitutability between ICFR review fee and financial statement audit fee, has never been done before in Korea. The empirical analysis used data from 94 auditee firms during 2007-2009 period. A Big 4 auditor firm in Korea performed external audits and ICFR reviews for all 94 sample firms. After eliminating some yearly data due to data availability, 144 firm-year data were obtained from the sample firms for the analysis. Firm-year observations are almost evenly distributed among 28 industries. Over the sample period, the average ICFR review fee and audit fee is 17 million Won, 138 million Won, respectively. The average ICFR review fee is about 12.3% of the average audit fee. Despite many of the overlapping features between financial statement audit and ICFR review, the two do not exhibit price substitutability. That is, the auditee firms pay statistically significant amount of ICFR review fees over and beyond extant audit fees. In other words, the external audit fees do not decrease despite of firms paying ICFR review fee in addition to external audit fees. This clearly shows auditee firms purchasing different service from the audit firm at least in the early years of adoption. We classified the explanatory variables into auditor litigation risk variables and some governance related variables. The latter is again sub-grouped into BOD (board of directors) composition-related, ownership-related, and audit committee-related variables. Auditor litigation risk is proxied by whether a firm has an officer and director insurance(ODI). BOD independence is measured by the percentage of outside directors. A dummy variable is used to proxy BOD expertise. If there is at least one accounting expert on the board, the dummy variable takes the value of 1, otherwise 0. Potential agency costs faced by an auditee firm is measured by the firm`s ownership structure. Two proxy variables are used: the first one is the shareholding percentage of the largest owner, and the second one is the management shareholdings. The last governance-related variable represent whether the firm has an audit committee. Several control variables are added to the ICFR review fee model. They are firm size, growth rate, and the number of subsidiaries. We expect the following relationship between ICFR review fee and explanatory variables. Positive relations are expected for ODI, BOD independence, BOD expertise, audit committee presence, firm size, growth rate, and the number of subsidiaries. Negative relation is expected for the potential agency cost variables, the largest owner`s shareholdings and managers` shareholdings. Ceteris paribus, firms with higher litigation risks, external director ratios in BOD and lower major shareholder`s ownership ratios and non-owner manager firms exhibited higher payment for the ICFR review service. The presence of an accounting expert in BOD did not have any explanatory power. These results are consistent with the extant agency costs explanation of major shareholder`s monitoring effect and shareholder/ non-owner manager agency costs. Also, the presence of the audit committee did not render additional explanatory power. Regarding firm characteristic variables, the sample firms with larger size and more subsidiary firms paid higher ICFR review fees. ICFR review fee and external audit fee data are independently regressed on the same explanatory firm variables. In the ICFR review fee regression, clientelle variables such as litigation risk, external directors ratio, management type, major shareholding ratio exhibit significant explanatory power. In contrast, in the audit fee regression, structural variables such as firm size, asset growth rate, and the number of subsidiaries display significant explanatory variables. The result is consistent with the argument that firms have to accept their audit risks as given and determine the audit fees accordingly, whereas firms do not have to consider audit risks when determining their ICFR review fees. This may shed light on why prior research document conflicting evidence on the relationship between audit fee and firm clientelle variables. Our study, which is the first one using ICFR review fee data, contributes to better understand the determinants of ICFR review fee, and also offers some helpful insights to establish ICFRrelated policy in the new IFRS regime. However, this study has some limitations due to the small sample obtained from a single Big 4 firm.