The number of advisers has increased from 21,496 to 22,557, the regulator reported this week. The total number of individual retail financial investment advisers stood at 30,600 as of this month.

This was broken down into:

Working at Financial Adviser firms: 22,557
Working at banks & building societies: 3,672
Working at discretionary investment managers: 1,944

The advisers belonged to 5,307 companies in total, which was broken down into:

Working at financial adviser firms: 4504
Working at banks & building societies: 43
Working at discretionary investment managers: 198

The FCA said there the caveat on the data was that these figures were based on returns submitted to it by firms and so it is dependent on firms updating the information.

Officials said they were planning to consult on bringing this data request within the RMAR, which they believe will lessen the potential for any weaknesses in the data.

The figures for last year were stated in a different format.

As of October 2014 there were 31,153 RDR advisers in the UK.

This broke down into:

Financial advisers 21496
Bank and building society 3182
Stockbroker 1906
Discretionary investment manager 1698
Other 2724
Waivers 147