Mostafa Kayed Abdelazeem Mohamed

Objective: This paper aims to examine the impact of corporate governance (CG) internal mechanisms on the external auditor opinion regarding the assurance of corporate governance reportDesign and Methodology: The sample used in the current research incorporates all companies listed in EGX from the period 2018 till 2020. The final sample comprises all corporate governance reports, management reports and auditors’ reports in the covered period with 550 observations. Statistical analysis is performed using multivariate regression through performing logistic regression as it fits the dichotomous dependent variable.Findings and Recommendations: The results revealed a positive significant relationship between audit committee existence, audit committee independence and auditors’ opinion. Further, CEO rule duality and executives in audit committee were found to have negative insignificant impact on auditor opinion. Finally, board independence was found to have positive insignificant impact on auditors’ opinion. Future research can focus on the impact of the auditor report on CG on stock prices and the cost of capital.Originality and Value: To the best of author knowledge, the current research represents an early attempt to investigate the impact of corporate governance internal, mechanisms and its impact on auditors’ opinion. This contribution extends and enrich the existing corporate governance and auditing literature.

This study examines the perceptions of external auditors operating in Egypt regarding technical reserves audit challenges and opportunities with the emergence of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). All audit firms that are specialized in reviewing insurance companies’ financial statements and are working in Egypt were surveyed to ascertain if there is a notable discrepancy in auditors' perceptions of challenges and opportunities of technical reserves audit with the emergence of ERP. The final sample consists of 126 auditors who work in Big 4 auditing firms, and non-Big 4 auditing firms. Through hypotheses testing the main findings reveal that the auditors' perceptions differ significantly from one another regarding challenges and risks encountering them in auditing the general insurance companies and the impact of ERP systems on the producers they carry out. In addition, the abovementioned perception differences were explained through engaging in auditors’ psychological counterpart (i.e., Gender, educational level, audit firm size and experience in auditing insurance companies) throughout the analysis. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the auditors’ perception regarding the technical reserve audit while using an ERP in emerging markets. Hence, the current study touches a blind spot in literature as the current investigation and results bring new evidence regarding technical reserve audit which enrich the ongoing debate on technical reserves audit and the challenges and opportunities related to the increased use of software packages like the ERP.