While numerous reports have suggested there is a stampede of advisors to the independent channel, new data from Boston-based research firm Cerulli Associates show that it’s more of trickle.

Financial advisors manage a collective $8.3 trillion in assets across all channels. Employee-advisors—advisors who work for banks, wirehouses, regionals and insurance firms—now account for 67.2% of those assets at the end of 2008, down from 68.4% in 2007. Bing Waldert, director at Cerulli, points out that while $100 billion in assets going independent is hardly insignificant, a 1.2% shift is not exactly a landslide.

One reason for the apparent shift toward the independent channel may simply be that there is a dearth of advisors joining the ranks. While independents represented 42.6% of the total 310,000 advisors in all channels, up from 39.8% in 2007, that total population of 310,000 hasn’t grown in five years. Advisors’ average age is now over 50, and older advisors with established books naturally migrate from their firms to start their own businesses. “For advisors who want to better address the needs of their wealthy clients, the RIA model is the next step,” Waldert says. The problem is, there’s no new blood to replace them.

In fact, only the bank channel is actually growing the advisor pool. While all other employee-advisor channels have shrunk since 2004, banks have increased their advisor headcount by 2% every year for the past five years. The bank channel may represent just 5% of the total advisor population at 16,000—Cerulli counts the branch-based Series 7 advisors as bank reps only, not advisors with more traditional practices at banks—but it added 400 new advisors last year, “mild growth” Waldert concedes, but better than nothing, given advisors’ increasing average age. “There’s a huge demographic opportunity coming,” says Waldert of the retiring baby boomers. “But the industry isn’t generating a new pool of financial advisors” to meet their needs.