After 26 years at Morgan Stanley, financial advisor Kevin Cignetti saw retirement on the horizon and decided to spend his last working years at an independent financial advisory firm with an old friend.

Cignetti, 67, started at Steward Partners Global Advisory in February. He made his move just as a growing number of brokers are finding they can make more money, save on taxes and choose their successor if they take their clients to an independent firm before they retire.

Cignetti, who plans to retire in two or three years, had managed about $35 million in client assets and produced about $250,000 in revenue at Morgan Stanley. While he could have retired where he was, he decided he wanted sell his business and clients to Rick Pignone, a long-time friend and former Morgan Stanley colleague who had joined Steward in December 2013.

"I feel very comfortable that when I do leave, Rick will take very good care of my clients," Cignetti said.

Succession planning for financial advisors is a top priority. About 100,000 brokers are expected to reach retirement age over the next 10 years, according to research firm Cerulli Associates.

Many advisors are thinking not only about whom they want to handle their clients, but also how they can use the sale of their business to partially fund retirement.

Big firms like Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp's Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo Advisors, and UBS typically pay a retiring advisor 0.85 to 1.4 times the annual revenue he or she produces for them. The advisor gets the total over several years, and the firm reassigns the clients to another advisor on staff during that time.

Steward Partners, which began operating in the fall of 2013 and offers securities through Raymond James Financial Services, is able to pay more because it is a partnership.

Steward typically pays advisors twice their annual revenue over five years, plus equity that the firm will buy back from the advisor after retirement, said President James Gold.

Cignetti will get slightly less than that, receiving between one and two times annual revenue for his business, but will still get more than if he had retired at Morgan Stanley, Gold said.

Cignetti, a Vietnam War veteran, said he was happy with the figure because his top priority was working with Pignone.