STP & Automation

Core Concepts

1. STP Fundamentals

Straight-through processing is the end-to-end automated completion of a business process without manual intervention: a transaction enters the system at one end and exits as a completed, booked, and confirmed event at the other with no human touching it along the way. True STP means zero manual intervention for the happy path; a process with a human review or approval at a midpoint is partially automated, not STP.

STP rate calculation. The fundamental metric is:

STP Rate = Automated Completions / Total Volume * 100

An "automated completion" is a transaction or workflow instance that passed through every step without manual intervention. If a trade requires a human to confirm a counterparty identifier before it can settle, that trade is not STP even though every other step was automated. The denominator is total volume, including both automated and exception items.