Hi @mckenzies,
Good health and welcome to the forum.
Thanks for your question and apologies for the late reply.
The pilot phase is not referring to the finalization of the framework and/or validity of the targets approved under the “pilot version”. But it refers to the fact that companies submitting the targets during the pilot phase are the very first companies submitting their emissions reduction targets under the SBTi framework for Financial Institutions (FI) and that we waive the usual validation fee for the first financial institutions submitting their targets for validation to the SBTi.
We expect the pilot phase to be over soon as we are approving more companies under the FI framework. There are currently 9 financial institutions approved, as you can see from this table: https://sciencebasedtargets.org/companies-taking-action#table. Please filter on “Banks…” and “1.5C” under “near term”.
In terms of the future updates of the framework, they generally happens annually and is part of the ongoing process of making the framework as robust as possible. This is the same for the corporate framework which has put version 4 behind it some time ago.
Having said that, all targets set under the current framework are as valid as targets set under later versions of the framework. So, there is no need to wait for the “final” framework, as this is unlikely to ever arrive. Think about it as software updates.
I hope this helps.