Cleveland-based advisor Marcus Ferro, who spent fourteen years building a practice almost entirely on Schwab Advisor Network referrals, learned this week that starting next year the minimum asset level for a referable client will rise to $5 million, meaning most of the people who built his business will, going forward, not be considered to exist. “I have ninety households. Under the new number, eleven of them are real. The rest are a rounding error with a pulse.” Ferro spent Tuesday reviewing his book and confirming which longtime clients had been retroactively reclassified as insufficient. Schwab, which raised the same threshold from $500,000 to $2 million in January and notes that most of the program’s money comes from clients with at least $10 million, has stated it remains deeply committed to independent advisors, most of whom it would also not refer.