A Freedom of Information (FoI) request by broker forum Cherry showed that the regulator pays 198 staff between £100,000 and £199,999, 11 employees up to £299,999 and four individuals more than £300,000.

The FoI reply refused to outline which divisions the staff worked for or what positions they held, as it was a matter of confidentiality.

However, according to the FSA’s annual report for 2008-09, chief executive Hector Sants earned £478,000, Sally Dewar, then wholesale and institutional markets managing director and now managing director of risk, earned £290,000. Jon Pain, then managing director of retail markets and now managing director of supervision, earned £240,289 and chairman Adair Turner earned £219,200.

The total remuneration for directors at the FSA in 2009 was just over £2.9m.

The FSA, whose budget is met by a levy on the firms it regulates, currently employs around 3300 staff and expects this number to rise to 3700 to “meet the delivery of its priorities”.

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Robert Sinclair, director of AMI, said: “There is a fascinating contradiction where the chief executives of our largest financial firms earn seven-figure sums and the people who are supposed to regulate them earn 10% of that, and we still expect them to stand shoulder to shoulder with them and keep them in order.

“I would like a regulator that has enough people who understand what they are doing; someone arguing with a hedge fund manager has to be on an equal footing in terms of knowledge. I would rather someone be paid enough and do the job properly.”

He added: “But I am not happy with the amount that intermediaries pay for the FSA and what the regulator does with it. The issue is always how effective the FSA is, not what it pays.”

The FSA refused to comment on its employees salary structure.