This paper examines how digital transformation affects corporate financing efficiency and whether corporate governance strengthens this relationship. As big data, artificial intelligence, and other new technologies are increasingly applied to various industries, business operation, information transmission, and resource allocation have been changed completely. But still facing the financial constraints, internal management issues affecting their corporate financing efficiency. This article intends to show how digital transformation improves financing efficiency through the improvement of governance structures, and to explore whether information transparency and agency costs mediate this effect, and whether equity balance has a moderating effect.Taking the A-share listed companies of the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2013 to 2024 as a sample, after eliminating ST firms and samples with missing data, this paper get 15,682 valid firm-year observations. The empirical framework uses financing efficiency, calculated by the DEA-BCC model, as the dependent variable. The digital transformation index, measured through annual-report text analysis, serves as the core explanatory variable. Corporate governance is represented by governance indicators, with equity balance specified as the moderating variable, while information transparency and agency cost are introduced as parallel mediating variables. Bidirectional fixed-effect regression models, moderating effect models, and parallel mediating effect models are estimated with firm size, debt-to-asset ratio, growth rate, firm age, and industry-year effects as control variables. Variable relations are visualized by scatter plots, curve fit diagram, heatmap and tree diagram.Empirical results show that digital transformation significantly improves financing efficiency, and the amplification of marginal effect for those who have higher efficiency. In this process, equity balance (EB) plays a positive moderating role, enhancing the enabling effect of digitization. Mediation analysis showed that digital transformation indirectly enhances financial efficiency via two independent channels, enhancing information transparency and reducing agency costs. Heterogeneity analysis finds that there is more synergy in high tech industries and large scale companies.To sum up, there exists a positive relationship between digital transformation and equity balance, which will help enterprises improve their financing efficiency. this effect works through information transparency and agency cost both directly and indirectly. The study provides new ideas to integrate the digital economy with corporate governance theory, and gives empirical support for firms to optimize their governance structures and financing capabilities in order to promote high-quality development strategies.
