Value relevance of IFRS adoption in the deposit money banks in Nigeria

The prime role of financial statements is to provide information that is useful to existing and potential investors, creditors and other users in making rational investment and similar decisions. Accounting information is a product of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), standards and other institutional settings which are presumed to shape the form and content of the financial reports. Uniform accounting standards assist investors and other market participants to effectively analyze firms from countries with accounting standards that they are familiar with and that IFRSs are adopted in order to achieve information of higher quality than local standards. Value relevance is one of the most common methods of examining the quality of accounting information. Information has the quality of relevance when it influences the economic decisions of users. This study examined value relevance of accounting information after the mandatory IFRSs adoption in the Nigerian Banking industry. Correlational research design using pre-and-post IFRSs regime analysis in a sample of 15 banks for a period of 8 years (2008-2015) was employed. Panel regression technique of data analysis was used and the study found that the adoption of IFRS has significantly improved the value relevance (decision usefulness) of accounting information of deposit money banks in Nigeria during the period covered by the study. However, the results show that the adoption of IFRS improves the value relevance of book values of equity and accounting earnings significantly. We recommend that accounting regulators should investigate the implementation credibility of IFRS in the Nigerian banks.