The Relationship between FinTech Industry Specialist and Audit Fees: Evidence from Taiwan’s Financial Industry^*

With the popularization and rapid development of various core financial technologies, traditional financial service companies are facing the challenge of accelerated integration into the financial digital transformation. The digitalization of business in the financial industry not only increases the cost of corporate governance, such as risk control management and technology supervision, but also poses a major challenge to audit firms responsible for external compliance audits, such as that to the International Standards on Auditing. This study explores the impact of financial digitalization on accounting firms’ industry specialist features and audit fees using a sample of financial industry in Taiwan. The evidence supports the conclusion that the relationship between audit fees and financial industry specialist audit firms is positive, but it also shows a negative relationship with the TechFin industry specialist audit firm. Particularly, this study finds a positive and significant relationship between audit fees and both financial and TechFin industry specialist audit firms, which demonstrates the knowledge spillover effect of audits. Finally, this study fills the gap in the literature on the relationship between industry specialist audit firms and audit fees in the financial industry and provides a new direction for the future development of financial technology specialists in the audit market.