The Financial Services Authority confirmed today there are 31,132 financial advisers operating in the market post-RDR.
This is the number of advisers who have a Statement of Professional Standing.
There are currently 30,045 advisers who are fully-qualified and 965 who are part-qualified, meaning they are covered under the 30-month rule for new advisers.
This rule gives certain advisers who started working in the market after a particular date 30 months grace to become fully-qualified. The figures are based on Professional Standards Data submitted by firms as of 31 December 2012.
The FSA said it not yet have figures on how many advisers had left the industry nor did it have a detailed breakdown of the types of advisers.
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In February, the FSA released results on its Small Firms website showing that in the summer of 2012 the number of advisers was down 11.5 per cent to 35,899. Some 2,000 of these were expecting to leave the market by the RDR deadline.
However, in December 2012, the FSA said 93 per cent of advisers had qualified as Level 4, two per cent were still studying and two per cent were waiting for results.
The latest figures suggest that the total number of advisers has fallen by about 20 per cent from its peak of around 40,000 in 2010.
Calculating the exact number of investment advisers has always been difficult because of the different types of authorisation and different types of adviser. The new system is likely to mean much more accurate figures as it will be based on those with a State of Professional Standing, the authorisation needed to continue to offer investment advice.

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