Drivers of Voluntary Integrated Reporting in the Nigerian Listed Deposit Money Banks

The advent of integrated reporting has attracted the attention of scholars globally to fill the gap in Nigeria in general, and Nigerian deposit money banks in particular. This study investigates the drivers of voluntary integrated reporting in Nigerian banking industry. The study crafted in the Nigerian listed Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) and all 13 banks listed on the Nigerian Exchange Group were taken as samples, and data were generated from the annual reports and accounts of the bank for the period of eight years from 2014 to 2021; descriptive statistics, correlation, and regression analysis were used for data analyses. The findings reveal that the factors that drive a bank to voluntarily report integrated reporting framework are the size of the bank, the age of the bank, the level of growth, the banks audited by the big international audit firms, and the board dominated by male directors; the findings also reveal that the average level of integrated reporting in the industry is 55%. The study recommended that the Nigerian exchange group should encourage listed companies to adopt integrated reports, especially the premium board, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) should provide a framework for voluntary integrated reporting in Nigeria and finally the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) should provide technical support that would ease the implementation of the IR framework by the Nigerian Deposit Money Banks (DMB).