Straight-through path
The item is complete, valid and confident enough to proceed on its own, and does.
- Finishes at machine speed
- No reviewer time per item
- Errors are silent unless audited
- Grows with data quality and evidence
Guide · Human in the loop
Straight-through processing: from arrival to done, with no hands.
STP is the share of work that completes end to end without a person touching it. The number is easy to raise and easy to fake — the craft is raising it while proving the work is still right.
This guide defines straight-through processing precisely, shows what it means in securities settlement, payments, insurance and document processing, gives the published figures from the US move to T+1, and sets out how to calculate an STP rate that survives an audit — then how to raise it one field at a time.
Updated · 6 sources
One item, start to finish, with no hands
01
Capturearrives as data — or is read into data from a document
no rekeying02
Validateformats, rules and reference data check out
rules03
Enrichmissing details filled from master data
lookups04
Decideclear enough — by rule or calibrated confidence — to proceed
threshold05
Execute and recordsettles, pays or posts, and logs what it did
zero touchesWhat is straight-through processing?
Straight-through processing (STP) is the completion of a transaction or work item end to end — from capture to settlement, payment or posting — without manual intervention. An item is “straight-through” only if no person reviews, corrects, approves or rekeys it at any step. The STP rate is the share of items that pass this way; the items that stop for a person are exceptions.
STP and exceptions
Straight-through processing compared with exception processing.
Every STP design splits work into two paths. The value comes from making the first path wide and the second path fast — not from pretending the second does not exist.
Exception path
Something failed — a rule, a match, a confidence threshold — and a person resolves it.
- Waits in a person’s queue
- Cost dominated by people
- Errors are visible and fixed
- Grows with volume unless STP rises
Every check passesTriggerAny check fails or confidence is low
The systemWho actsA reviewer or approver
Blind audit samplesHow quality is knownThe reviewer’s own decision
Width — share of itemsWhat to optimiseSpeed and evidence for the reviewer
trading
Securities
Trade capture, allocation, confirmation, affirmation and settlement with no manual step. Now written into US rules for central matching providers.
banking
Payments
A payment that clears screening, validation and routing untouched. Swift credits ISO 20022’s structured data with enhancing STP.
claims and underwriting
Insurance
A claim paid or a policy issued without an adjuster or underwriter touching it — inside an AI governance programme regulators expect.
IDP
Documents
An invoice, form or statement read, validated and posted with no field reviewed by a person.
Straight-through processing in banking
Straight-through processing in banking: what the move to T+1 required.
When US securities settlement shortened from two business days to one, there was no longer time for manual post-trade steps. Regulators wrote straight-through processing into the rules, and the industry measured its progress publicly.
- Feb 2023SEC adopts T+1Rules shorten settlement to T+1, require same-day allocation, confirmation and affirmation, and require central matching providers to facilitate STP and report on it yearly.
- Dec 2023Baseline69% of trades affirmed by 9:00 PM ET on trade date; DTCC recommends at least 90%.
- May 2024Compliance dateT+1 settlement takes effect in the US on 28 May 2024.
- Dec 2024After the switchIndustry affirmation reaches 96% by 9 PM on trade date, up from 83% in April 2024, per DTCC’s matching unit.
The STP rate
How to calculate a straight-through processing rate you can defend.
An STP rate is a fraction, and both halves are easy to bend. Fix the definitions before the first report, and pair the rate with a measure of the errors that went straight through.
Illustrative month: 10,000 invoices received
Touchless (no person at any step) 7,200
Touched (any review, fix or approval) 2,800
STP rate = 7,200 / 10,000 = 72.0%
Blind audit of touchless items: 360 sampled, 4 wrong
Escape rate = 4 / 360 ≈ 1.1%
Estimated errors that went straight through
≈ 1.1% × 7,200 ≈ 80
Clean STP rate = (7,200 − 80) / 10,000 ≈ 71.2%
4 errors in 360 is a thin sample: a 95% Wilson
interval on the escape rate is 0.4%–2.8%, or
about 30 to 200 errors among the 7,200.
Audit more before you quote the clean rate.The measures that belong together
- STP rateItems with zero touches ÷ all items received, same period and population.
- Escape rateErrors found in a blind audit of straight-through items ÷ items audited.
- Clean STP rateStraight-through items that were right ÷ all items. The number that matters.
- Field-level STPShare of fields that needed no review — useful for finding the blockers.
- Exception cycle timeHow long a touched item waits and is worked.
Five checks before you publish an STP rate
- Count everything receivedThe denominator is every item that arrived, not only those that entered the automated path.
- Count every touchA “quick look”, a rekeyed field or a later correction makes the item touched.
- Audit the touchless itemsWithout a blind sample, a higher STP rate may only mean more silent errors.
- Split by populationReport easy and hard document types apart; one blended rate hides where the work is.
- Subtract late reversalsItems reversed or corrected downstream were not straight-through.
The trade-off
Straight-through processing rate against accuracy: the four outcomes.
Lowering a confidence threshold raises STP and lets more errors through; raising it does the opposite. Plotting both tells you which problem you have.
High accuracy
Safe but slowReviewers confirm work the machine already got right. Calibrate and raise STP field by field.over-reviewed
The targetMost items flow untouched and audits confirm they are right. Keep sampling.proven
Low accuracyPoor inputsLow confidence and many errors: fix data quality, the schema or the model first.fix upstream
Fast mistakesErrors pass silently. Raise thresholds, audit blind, and narrow scope now.risk
Low STP rateHigh STP rateRaising STP safely
How to raise straight-through processing safely, one step at a time.
STP rises fastest when inputs get cleaner and when automation is earned per field, with evidence, rather than switched on per process.
Every item reviewedOnly exceptions reviewed
12345
- ManualPeople key and check everything.
- AssistedThe machine pre-fills; people confirm every field.
- Field-level STPProven fields skip review; the rest are checked.
- Document-level STPWhole items flow when every chosen field passes.
- Exception-onlyPeople see failures and a blind audit sample.
Cleaner inputs
Structured messages, standard settlement instructions and validated forms remove exceptions before they start.
Calibrated thresholds
A threshold on calibrated confidence, per field, sends only the uncertain values to people. See confidence calibration.
Audit and alarm
Keep a blind sample of straight-through items and stop automation when the audited error rate climbs.
On Botminds
How Botminds decides straight-through processing field by field.
On Botminds you choose the fields that may go straight through, then set each threshold — or state the accuracy you need and let the platform derive the threshold from evidence.
- Choose the fields
Pick the fields that may go straight through; every other field goes to a person.
- Set the bar
Give a threshold, or a target such as “at least 99% right”; the platform finds the lowest threshold it can certify at 95% confidence.
- Gate the document
A document passes when every chosen field passes; a critical field left empty sends it to review.
- Audit blind
A share of passing documents goes to a person, shown without scores.
- Watch for drift
With an accuracy target set and audits running, a climbing audited error rate trips an alarm that switches straight-through off for the field until a person restores it.
Each value carries a verdict — passed or needs review — and a pass is withdrawn if the value is edited, the threshold is raised or a validation rule breaks. Read human in the loop for the full design.
Questions people ask
Straight-through processing (STP): common questions.
The technology behind itHuman in the loopApprovals, review and calibrated confidence→What is straight-through processing in simple terms?
Straight-through processing means a transaction or document goes from arrival to completion with no person touching it — no review, no correction, no approval, no rekeying. Items that need a person are exceptions.
What is the straight-through processing rate?
The share of items completed with zero manual touches, out of all items received in the same period. Report it with an escape rate — errors found in a blind audit of straight-through items — so a higher rate cannot hide more mistakes.
What is straight-through processing in banking?
Automating a trade or payment end to end: capture, validation, enrichment, matching, confirmation and settlement without manual steps. US rules for T+1 settlement require central matching providers to facilitate STP and report on it.
What is straight-through processing in insurance?
Claims settled or policies issued without an adjuster or underwriter touching them — usually simple, low-value or low-risk cases — while the rest go to people. Insurers using AI for these decisions are expected to run them under a written AI governance programme.
What is a good STP rate?
It depends on the process and its inputs, so compare like with like. DTCC’s recommendation for trade affirmation was at least 90% by the trade-date cut-off; for documents, the right target is the highest rate at which audited accuracy still meets your requirement.
What is the difference between STP and automation?
Automation can cover part of a process with a person still reviewing in the middle. STP means the whole item completes without any person; a process can be heavily automated and still have a low STP rate.
How does AI increase straight-through processing?
By reading documents into validated data, scoring each value’s confidence, and letting values that clear a calibrated threshold proceed — while sending the uncertain ones, and a blind audit sample, to people.
Sources
- SEC press release 2023-29: rules shortening the settlement cycle to T+1 (February 2023)sec.gov
- DTCC: Affirmation progress report and post-trade best practices to achieve T+1 (January 2024)dtcc.com
- DTCC ITP Matching (US) LLC, Form 17AD-27/A annual STP report, FY2024 (SEC EDGAR)sec.gov
- Swift: ISO 20022swift.com
- NAIC Model Bulletin: Use of Artificial Intelligence Systems by Insurers (adopted 4 December 2023)content.naic.org
- IBM: What is straight-through processing?ibm.com
Read next
Human in the loop vs on the loopIn, on and out of the loop — and the autonomy spectrum between them→Confidence calibrationReliability diagrams, ECE, and Platt, isotonic and temperature scaling→Structured data extraction with LLMsSchemas, structured outputs, validation layers and citations→Agentic workflow examplesNine real processes, each drawn step by step, across six industries→All guidesEvery explainer, by topic→
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