Audit committee characteristics and compliance by Islamic banks with AAOIFI accounting standards

Abstract

This study examines the effect of audit committee characteristics (size, independence, and expertise) on compliance with the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI's) Financial Accounting Standards (FASs). Our sample consists of 372 bank-year observations from 2009 to 2015. Using panel regressions, our results provide evidence that compliance with AAOIFI's FASs is positively influenced by audit committee size. However, audit committee independence does not affect the compliance level. With respect to audit committee expertise, we find a positive and significant association between compliance with AAOIFI's FASs and accounting financial expertise. Moreover, our results reveal that audit committee members with accounting financial and culture expertise are positively and significantly associated with the level of compliance with AAOIFI's FASs. Interestingly, our finding suggests that an audit committee member with a combination of culture expertise (expertise in Islamic banking) and accounting financial expertise better improves the compliance level than an audit committee member with only accounting financial expertise.