If you don't complain about your endowment in time, you may be too late.

This ruling suits the financial services industry well. Not only do they pay minimal compensation to people to whom they mis-sold endowments, but after a certain length of time they can put it all behind them.

Yet many people with endowment mortgages may still not understand the problems which they could meet in the future.

Timescales for complaints

This is the core of the FSA policy on deadlines for endowment mortgage complaints:

Mortgage endowment providers have been sending their customers "reprojection letters" which either show your endowment:

• is on track to repay your mortgage;
• has a significant risk that it will fall short of its target; or
• has a high risk it won't repay your mortgage.

In most cases, the 'clock' for determining whether you are in time to make a complaint to the Ombudsman does not start ticking until you receive a letter that tells you there is a high risk your endowment won't repay your mortgage, and does not stop until either

• three years from the date you received the letter or, if this gives you more time
• six months after you get a second letter or other warning that your endowment policy may have a shortfall.

However, if a firm can show that you ought to have realised that you had cause for complaint against it before you received a 'high risk' reprojection letter, the 'clock' will start ticking from that earlier date and will stop ticking three years after that date. Whether this applies in your case will obviously depend on the facts.

New rules from April 1988

This is when the current system of consumer safeguards came into force, under the 1986 Financial Services Act. Companies can deal with a pre-1988 dispute however they choose, though some to their credit have agreed to apply the new standards retrospectively.

Before 1988, financial services was a jungle and consumer protection was minimal.

Now consumer protection is better, but firms are still not having to pay customers enough when there has been blatant bad practice. As a matter of routine, there should be a flexible punishment element too.