You have to complain to the firm that sold you the endowment before you approach the ombudsman.

When you complain, the firm will probably ask you to fill complete a questionnaire.

It will probably look remarkably like the questionnaire used by the ombudsman. The ombudsman encourages firms to do this, to speed up consideration of complaints, as everyone is starting from the same information base. And if you have to go on to the ombudsman, it should be simpler for you.

So you may like to start by downloading the ombudsman's endowment mortgage questionnaire.

What's in the endowment mortgage questionnaire?

Be careful when you complete it. Once you have committed information to the process, it is naturally difficult to change it.

Many of the questions are factual. Take special care over

• Question 13 (What was said about the possibility of shortfall at the time of the sale?)
   
  This can be a ground for mis-selling.
   
  If you were told there was no possibility of a shortfall, were you given a guarantee of the performance of the endowment? This can be a ground for mis-selling.
   
• Question 15 (Replacing an existing policy with a new one.)
   
  This is called churning, and is almost always a ground for mis-selling. (The usual reason for this recommendation is to increase the adviser's commission.)
   
• Question 16 (Did you have other investments or savings at the time?)
   
  This is a very important question. The answer is used to define what is called your "attitude to risk". If an endowment was too risky for you, the complaint can succeed on the basis that an endowment mortgage cannot have matched your attitude to risk. For example, if you were very conservative and kept all your savings in a building society and would never have had any truck with the stock market, your complaint may succeed on the ground of attitude to risk.
   
  The ombudsman sometimes allows a complaint on this ground even when it is not a point which the complainant has raised.
   
  Question 26 is also relevant - if this was your first mortgage, it is reasonable to assume you had less financial knowledge.
   
• Question 17 (Too much life cover?)
   
  That can be a ground for complaint, especially if you had no dependants (Question 12).
   
• Question 33 (Mortgage into retirement)
   
  This is often a sign of mis-selling. Questions 18, 19 and 20 then become relevant.

What next for my endowment complaint?

Visit our guide to how endowment complaints are decided.