Low fees are not a bargain. They are a governance failure.
The quality of an independent audit is inseparable from the resources deployed to conduct it. Yet in India, audit fees for listed companies have consistently failed to keep pace with the very companies they are meant to scrutinise. Between 2018 and 2023, audit fees for Nifty 500 companies rose a modest 28 per cent — against market capitalisation growth of over 90 per cent, net sales of 84 per cent, and profits after tax of 126 per cent. By comparison, audit fees for FTSE-listed companies in the United Kingdom rose 75 per cent over the same period. The gap is not incidental. It is structural, sustained, and consequential.
