"I'm aligning myself with TNP, but I'm not joining them as a broker," Kotwal said.

"Advisers should be able to be aligned with me, they'll have nothing to do with TNP."

However, TNP managing director Jeff Page said he was to meet with Kotwal yesterday about his rejoining TNP.

"At this stage we haven't signed the contract, the discussion we've had is he would like to join TNP as a member and what he'd like to do is to continue to build his group but then to tap into a lot of the resources that we provide," Page said.

"We haven't made a final decision as to whether we want to accept him yet."

Kotwal is in the process of trying to establish his own dealer group, The Adviser Channel, and said he had six advisers already with his new group, another one going through training school and was in the process of reviewing a number of applications.

Kotwal said he was happy to work with TNP while establishing his own dealer group.

Page said that he admired Kotwal's ambition and that while he wished him luck, his own experience had taught him that establishing a dealer group "isn't an easy job."

"I've devoted the last 10 years of my life to the formation and building and thinking about dealer groups. We're now pretty strong and doing a lot of good things in the marketplace, 420 members, that doesn't happen just by good luck and that doesn't happen by paying somebody 10% more of offering free services."