An Analysis of the Impact of Cloud Accounting on Performance of Financial Service Firms Quoted on the Nigerian Exchange Group, 2014 to 2023

Cloud accounting, encompassing the deployment of hybrid cloud architectures to manage financial data, processes, and reporting systems, has emerged as a transformative technological innovation in the Nigerian banking sector, driven by the imperative for cost efficiency, real-time financial reporting, and regulatory compliance. This study analyses the impact of cloud accounting, specifically hybrid cloud adoption, on the financial performance of quoted financial service firms in Nigeria. The study adopts an ex-post facto research design and uses secondary data drawn from the audited annual reports and financial statements of nine purposively selected Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) listed on the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX), covering the ten-year period from 2014 to 2023. The resulting balanced panel comprises ninety (90) firm-year observations. Hybrid cloud adoption is proxied by the natural logarithm of annual information technology expenditure as disclosed in notes to the financial statements. Five performance indicators serve as dependent variables: Profit for the Year, Return on Assets, Turnover, Net Assets, and Firm Size. Panel data regression techniques including pooled OLS, Fixed Effects, and Random Effects estimators were employed, with the Hausman specification test and robust post-estimation diagnostics applied. The study finds that hybrid cloud adoption has a significant positive effect on Profit for the Year, Return on Assets, Turnover, and Net Assets, while its effect on Firm Size is positive but statistically insignificant. The study concludes that investment in cloud accounting infrastructure meaningfully enhances the financial performance of Nigerian DMBs and recommends stronger cloud adoption strategies and supportive regulatory frameworks.