| This paper examines how bank regulators and external auditors affect financial reporting decisions. Both groups serve an important role in the financial reporting process given their access to internal bank information, but they have different objectives and incentives affecting their influence on financial reporting. To provide insight into their roles, I examine loan loss provision timeliness, an accounting choice associated with significant managerial discretion, important economic consequences, and a potential conflict between regulators and auditors. Using a matched sample and control group, I find that external audits and greater regulatory scrutiny are each positively associated with loan loss provision timeliness. However, I further show that in the presence of greater regulatory scrutiny, audited banks recognize less timely loan losses relative to unaudited banks. Together, these results suggest that the objectives and incentives of regulators and auditors may differentially influence financial reporting outcomes. |
