For decades, banks and insurers have employed the same relatively static, highly profitable business models. But today they find themselves confronted on all sides by innovators seeking to disrupt their businesses. Crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lenders, mobile payments, bitcoin, robo-advisers – there seems to be no end to the diversity, or to the sky-high valuations, of these “fintech” innovators.

Yet, some might note that they have heard this tune before. The direct banks and “digi-cash” of the 90s captured the imagination of journalists and investors in a similar fashion, but ultimately had little impact. In fact, the financial services industry has been remarkably impervious to past assaults by innovators, partially due to the importance that scale, trust and regulatory know-how have traditionally played in this space.

However, as they say in investing, “past performance is not an indicator of future success” and the same may be true for banks’ and insurers’ record of besting innovators.

A new World Economic Forum report takes a look into what the future holds for the industry. It draws on over 100 interviews with industry experts and a series of workshops that put strategy officers from global financial institutions in the same room as high-flying fintech innovators to discuss the issue. Their findings suggest this round of innovation just might make the big names in financial services rethink their business models in some very fundamental ways.

Here are five characteristics of today’s innovators to suggest this time might really be different when it comes to disruptive innovation in financial services:

1. They’re deploying highly focused products and services

Past innovators often tried to replicate the whole bank, resulting in business models that either appealed only to the most tech-savvy or price-conscious customers. Today’s innovators are aggressively targeting the intersection between areas of high frustration for customers and high profitability for incumbents, allowing them to “skim the cream” by chipping away at incumbents’ most valuable products. It is hard to think of a better example of this than remittance – banks have traditionally charged very high fees for cross-border money transfers and offered a poor customer experience, with transfers often taking up to three days to arrive at their destination. UK-based company Transferwise is challenging this process using an innovative network of bank accounts and a user-friendly web interface to make international transfers faster, easier and much cheaper. Thanks to this business model, the company now oversees over £500 million of transfers a month and has recently expanded into the US.

2. They are automating and commoditizing high-margin processes

Innovators are also using their technical skills to automate manual processes that are currently very resource intensive for established players. This allows them to offer services to whole new groups of customers that were once reserved for the elite. “Robo-advisers” like Wealthfront, FutureAdvisor and Nutmeg have automated a full suite of wealth management services including asset allocation, investment advice and even complicated tax minimization strategies, all offered to customers via an online portal. While customers must forego the in-person attention of a dedicated adviser, they receive many of the services they would offer at a fraction of the cost and without needing to have the $100,000