Sadly in my experience I do not believe the Ombudsman offers any great value. The onus it seems to me is always on you to have to provide all the information (In my case I could not, but put together what I could had to copy hundreds of pages at my expense), they then narrow the scope, if multiple banks/insurance companies are involved I was told I would have to raise a different case and to add insult injury I was them asked to pay the offending company in this case Cardiff Pinnacle to provide copies of cetain documents which they failed to do. What did the Ombudsman do Nothing and at the end of it there decision is final!!!. Sorry but the claim they are independent is nonsense and the approach they had in my case was both extremely unhelpful and simply not logical. In fact there was just as frustrating to deal with as Cardiff Pinnacle. Have no faith in the FSA or Ombudsman and the quite clear lack of controls in the Financial sector has resulted in us being were we are today.