Entitled. Narcissistic. Pompous.

However older generations prefer to describe millennials, theycan add one more thing to the list: uninsured.

Millennials have been getting flak from almost every side, overeverything from their decisions not to purchase health insurance totheir poor judgment in getting fine art degrees. Now the insuranceindustry is worried that the most populous generation in Americahappens to also be the most underinsured.

Generation “me”

There has never been a clear cut time frame for when themillennial generation started – most research institutions thatstudy them broadly define millennials as being born anytimebetween 1980 and 2004 – and they have jumped around from definitionto definition over the past decade.

But where researchers can't agree on a jumping off point fordefining millennials, they do agree on one thing: they've beenspoiled.

“What is true about this generation is that they were childrenduring economic prosperity and their parents have truly coddledthem and shielded them from a harsh reality,” says Dr. Kit Yarrow,a consumer psychologist and author of the book “Decoding the NewConsumer Mind.”

“Their blinders are like double wide,” she says.

Yarrow told PC360 that, whereas all generations intheir 20s have experienced being 10-feet-tall-and-bulletproof,millennials are unique in that they are the only ones who haveexperienced this en masse.

Insurance? Who needs it?

Purchasing patterns for insurance by millennials reflectthat fact, as only 64% of them have car insurance, 10% havehomeowners insurance and 13% have renters insurance, according to asurvey conducted by the Princeton Survey Research AssociatesInternational.

But for millennials that have purchased homeownersinsurance, they've become increasingly critical of their policiesand insurance carriers, more so than older generations, accordingto a new report released on Sept. 18 by J.D. Power.

A part of this is a value shift in purchasing and thegeneration's interactions with large corporations that, as a whole,millennials largely distrust, according to a report releasedthis year by the public relations firm, Edelman.

“They just don't tend to trust big companies,” Laura Adams,senior insurance analyst for Insurancequotes.com, tellsPC360.

Adams says that millennials, unlike other generations, activelyknow when they're being advertised to, and as a result are morelikely to not buy the product that's being pitched.

“This is a generation that doesn't like to be advertised to.That's the main challenge,” says Adams. “They have a take onadvertising as an invasion of their time and their life. Theywant to discover things themselves and find answers to solutions,but a lot of times people don't know enough to find the answersthey need.”

And therein lays the problem for insurance companies. Accordingto Pew Research Center, millennials may be the most educatedgeneration in American history, with over 34% holding at least abachelor's degree, but they tend to know very little about theinsurance industry, how it operates or even basic costs ofinsurance policies. And they aren't listening to the industrythat's trying to educate them.

In a poll conducted by the Griffith Insurance EducationFoundation, only 5% of students polled were very familiar with theinsurance industry. Compared to 80% of students who said they knewnothing about the industry at all.

“There are some deeper issues there which make them overestimatethe cost,” says Adams who also conducted studies on millennials andtheir knowledge of insurance pricing. “When we asked 'why don't youhave renters insurance' and asked about cost, and when we ask themto estimate it, we find they give huge numbers more like a homeinsurance policy. They really don't know enough about theproduct.”

Insurers need to step up

The solution, it seems, is for companies that need to harnessmillennials to be more transparent and technologically savvythan they have ever been before. According to Yarrow, insurancecompanies need to be more, what she calls “technovative.”

“The ones that can jump ahead of the path will be moreinnovative and technologically advanced, and those who are mosttransparent and honest instead of spouting legalese,” Yarrowsays.

J.D. Power echoed this in a report released this year thatshowed millennials were more likely to buy from auto insuranceproviders that had better navigation on their websites and weremore transparent about underwriting policies.

Broader economic issues at play

What's unknown is when millennials will make the shift inpurchasing insurance. The generation is more likely to stay homeafter college, building savings and maintaining their creaturecomforts, and they are more likely to get married and have kidsmuch later in life. This socio-economic shift from previousgenerations has delayed millennials from thinking about theirinsurance needs, says Adams.

But that doesn't mean millennials are any less productive intheir lives. If anything, millennials tend to want a moreGoogle-style approach to work, favoring life-work balance and moreindependence in their jobs, according to a NextGen study conductedby Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC).

And the group tends to lean more toward urban living, in placeswhere cars are less needed and renting is more common, pushing theinsurance burden on car-share companies like ZipCar.

That value change may have older generations shaking theirsticks at millennials, but it's not their fault and definitelyshouldn't be worrisome, says Yarrow.

“Part of it is just being young. This generation is notdefective, they were just fed a lot of messages that set them upfor disappointment,” says Yarrow. “In ten years, they might lookreally solid and distinguished. They're going to live till they're120, let them have a few extra years to figure it out.”