STP technology: An overview and a conceptual framework

Today's capital market and security industry are rapidly changing. With the rising of trading volume in stock markets and the US security industry moving to compress the settlement time from T + 3 (3 days settlement) to T + 1 (same day settlement), a fully automated global approach, based on straight through processing (STP) technology seems the only choice. STP involves moving electronically through a trading process from initiation through post-execution and final settlement without manual intervention. Despite the benefits that have been materialized by early adopters of STP, there are problems and risks involved in implementing STP, one of which being the confusion about the concept of STP itself. The objective of this short research note is to clarify the concept and characteristics of STP and propose an integrated conceptual and theoretical STP framework. Such a framework can facilitate a widespread understanding of STP and provide useful guidance to STP implementations.