Reporting of Key Audit Matters in Independent Auditor's Reports: Examination of Independent Auditor's Reports of Enterprises Included in the BIST 100 Index for the Years 2019-2021

Abstract

Key audit matters (KAM) are expressed as those that are of the greatest importance among the issues that the independent auditor pays attention to during the audit, and these issues are selected from among the issues reported to the people responsible for senior management. The purpose of this study is to conduct a content analysis to determine what are the KAM's included in the independent auditor's reports of the companies in the BIST 100 index for the years 2019-2020 and 2021 and which KAM's are more prominent. In this context, it was determined which KAM's were given more space on the basis of sectors, audit companies and types of opinions, and the development course was monitored on a year-by-year basis. According to the research findings, it has been determined that 211 KAM have been reported in the reports of the companies in the BIST 100 index for the year 2019, 213 KAM in the reports for the year 2020 and 209 KAM in the reports for the year 2021. From a sectoral point of view, it has been revealed that the sectors with the highest number of KAM reported are financial institutions and manufacturing sectors. In addition, it has been determined in the research that the fact that 2019 was before the pandemic and the years 2020-2021 were also a pandemic process did not affect the KAMs.