Nigerian Banks and Global Ranking: The IFRS Compliance Impact

Abstract

The study focused on the assessment of Nigerian banks’ compliance level with the guidelines of IFRS towards determining the extent to which such compliance has contributed to improving the acceptability of the organisations’ financial reports globally. Using the content analysis research design approach, the primary and secondary data sources were employed for the successful execution of this research work. A total of 77 disclosure items obtained from the IFRS disclosures checklist were deployed for selected financial statements assessment, and the data extracted from the 2012-2014 financial reports of Zenith Bank, First City Monument Bank, Guaranty Trust Bank, Diamond Bank, Access Bank, United Bank for Africa, ECO Bank, First Bank, and Fidelity Bank — all Nigeria Banks that made the world list of top 1000 banks in 2015, were subjected to multiple regression analysis using SPSS version 22 package. The outcome of the analysis showed that the level of compliance of Nigerian banks to IFRS disclosure guidelines has indeed improved the acceptability of her financial reporting practices globally. It was also discovered that significant contributions were made by the independent variables in explaining the compliance quality level of IFRS disclosure practices upheld by the Nigerian banks. It was however recommended that further research effort be intensified into this research area towards ascertaining the ‘data quality’ level (how reliable the disclosed financial data are) of the financial statements of these nine (9) Nigerian banks, in order to maximally complement the emphasis focus of this research work — the ‘compliance quality’ of studied banks’ financial statements to IFRS disclosure requirements.