Effect of Key Audit Matters and Auditors’ Remuneration on Audit Report Timeliness among Listed Firms in Nigerian Exchange Group

The systematic problem of late issuance of audit report by Nigerian Exchange Group listed companies is a challenge to timely financial reporting and compromises investor confidence and market efficiency. This paper has analysed the influence of Key Audit Matters (KAM) and Auditors Remuneration (AUR) on Audit Report Timeliness of listed companies in Nigeria. Particularly, the research was meant to evaluate the impact of KAM and establish the influence of AUR on the audit report lag. The research design used was an ex post facto type of research and the panel data used was the audited financial statements of listed firms in the years 2016 to 2023. The analysis of the hypotheses that were formulated was done using Pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis. The results showed that the remuneration of auditors significantly and positively impacted the timeliness of audit report, but the impact of key audit matters was not significant on the length of audit report lag. The research found that audit fee contributes to reporting delays, potentially because of the complexity and length of audit practices, but the KAM disclosure, even though important to transparency, has no effect on audit completion time. It is suggested that regulators, including Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRCN) and Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX) should introduce monitoring systems to ascertain that increase in audit fees should be followed by audit quality and efficiency, and that audit firms must not jeopardize audit timeliness to comply with KAM reporting procedures.