4.1 million British households now have a dedicated financial adviser and 5.6 million engage an adviser from time to time.

At a time of much change in the pensions market and continued evolution within the asset management savings and investment product arena, the role of financial advisers remains critical to the investment outcomes of UK savers.

The above figures equate to approximately 160 ongoing clients per each registered UK adviser, and approximately 220 ‘walk in’ clients who request their services intermittently.

In a new CoreData Research report, Grassroots Financial Advice 2015, the South East, South West, and East Anglia are most likely to experience the strongest growth in adviser usage over the coming years, particularly for advisers servicing the mass market.

Investors and potential advice seekers are split into five clusters: Traditional Savers, Frugal Lifers, Anxious Pre-retirees, the Fortunate Few and Active Accumulators (see below illustration for a breakdown).

Although the Fortunate Few and Anxious Pre-Retirees are natural advice seekers, Active Accumulators represent potential client pools for advisers and financial product providers.

These individuals tend to be more indifferent to advice engagement, yet given the right advice and incentive circumstances could play a key role in adviser client growth.

Active Accumulators are most commonly found in the South East (14%), London (15%) as well as East Anglia (10%) and Scotland (10%).

The Fortunate Few are the wealthiest group and most likely to have an adviser. There is a large concentration of these individuals in South East England as well as Yorkshire & the Humber. Anxious Pre-Retirees are also reliant on advisers and can be found all across the UK.

The South West of England represents the strongest hub of affluent financial advice clients as the region has double the average household wealth of the least affluent – North East England (£288,300 vs £142,700).

London remains a fundamental key market for advisers seeking Emerging HNW and HNW clients.

Accumulators (those aged 18-49) are the predominant age band in the UK (57%).

Retirees still make up the smallest portion of the population (19%), although there has been an increase of 0.7% (some 400,000 more retirees) compared to the prior census in 2001.

Adviser usage peaks at pre-retiree stage (aged 50-65), with 54% either having an ongoing (24%) or casual (30%) relationship with their adviser.

Over 60% of HNW and emerging HNW people employ advisers in some capacity.

Emerging HNWs and HNWs have almost the same likelihood to have an ongoing relationship with advisers – 38.5% versus 38.8%.

Clusters were identified through spatial analysis which allows for more comprehensive breakdown of investor types in the UK and helps identify the predominant segments of the UK adviser market and how to best approach the different client types.

The characteristics examined in drawing up these groups are: Age, annual income, whether or not investors had Cash or Stocks Isas (used as a proxy for awareness of tax efficiency), whether they had a mortgage, the amount in their savings account, how much they saved per year and to what extent they communicate with a financial adviser.

If we assume these clusters represent the entire UK adult population, then 8.8 million people can be classified as Traditional Savers and eschew the use of a financial adviser; 8.4 million are Frugal Lifers; 13.5 million are Anxious Pre-Retirees; Active Accumulators account for 12.4 million of the population while the Fortunate Few represent a smaller proportion of the UK population (5.7 million).