Impact of Digitalized Accounting Information System on Financial Reporting Quality of Commercial Banks in Nigeria.

Despite the vital role commercial banks play in an economy (especially a developing one like Nigeria) through the channelling of scarce funds to productive sectors, empirical studies centred on the financial reporting quality of these pivotal engines of an economy are still just a handful, especially using their level of digitisation and digital accounting practices as a determining factor. Hence, in order to add to the few extant literature, this study was embarked upon to investigate the impact of digitalised accounting information system on the financial reporting quality of these listed banks using data extracted from their annual reports from 2017-2023. The collected data were analysed using correlation and simple linear regression. The study revealed that digitalised accounting information systems not only have a significant relationship with the financial reporting quality of the listed commercial banks but also that the fundamental and enhancing qualitative characteristics of their financial reporting are significantly affected by their adopted software, internal controls, information technology infrastructure, and the use of big data and data analytics mechanisms (all combined).The study further revealed that majority of top management of these listed banks consider digitalised accounting information systems. Hence, the study recommended that these banks should increase investment in state-of-the-art information technology infrastructure to cater for the large scale data processing, invest in customised software to fit their structure and day to day operations, increase usage of insights drawn from big data to drive innovative products and banking operations, and to enhance and upscale internal control procedures to accommodate the inevitable technological development that plague modern day businesses. All these if implemented would not only increase the financial reporting quality of the listed commercial banks but would also give them a competitive edge over their industry rivals.