Straight-through processingSTP

The share of users decided automatically, with no human involved.

If 90 out of every 100 verifications get an automatic approve or decline, and 10 go to a person, the straight-through processing rate is 90 percent.

The proportion of cases fully adjudicated by automated policy without analyst intervention, tracked as a rate ops teams use to size the review queue and staff accordingly. Adjudicated means a final decision was reached, and analyst intervention means a person looked at the case.

Straight-through processing (STP) is calculated by dividing the cases decided automatically by all cases in the period. Several things move the rate:

• Model and rule quality, since more accurate decisions leave fewer cases uncertain.
• Thresholds, since a wider review band sends more cases to people.
• Document and data coverage, since unsupported documents often end up in review.
• Capture quality, since poor images lead to more uncertain results.

Teams use the rate in a few ways:

1. Capacity planning, to estimate how many analysts the review queue needs.
2. Cost tracking, to see what each verification costs once review time is included.
3. Performance tuning, to find causes of cases that fall out of automation.

A high rate is not automatically a good one. If it rises because thresholds were loosened, fraud can slip through, so teams read it together with fraud and pass rates.

Straight-through processing sits next to terms that are easy to mix up:

• Manual review is the human work that handles the cases outside the automated share.
• Pass rate is the share of genuine users approved, which is a different measure.
• Decisioning engine is the component that produces the automated decisions.