If baby boomers aren't around to drive the demand for more auto loans, credit cards, mortgage loans, HELOCs and boat loans, and millennials fail to pick up the slack, who will borrow in 2025?

The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Cornerstone Financial's director of research, Ron Shelvin, said millennials, as they age and face different priorities, will fill the borrower void in 2015 as more baby boomers retire.

"First, I think the idea that millennials are so against taking out loans has been quite a bit overstated," Shelvin said. "I don't think there is any certainty that surveys measuring millennial attitudes today are doing anything more than looking at their attitudes now and not five or 10 years from now."

Shevlin pointed out that millennials had front-row seats during the Great Recession, which tainted their attitudes toward borrowing and caused them to distrust the economy in general.

However, he also said as economic conditions continue to improve and millennials take steps in their lives – start careers, live on their own, find partners and have children – they will join the loan market.

"It's relatively easy when you are 23 or 24 and really only have yourself to care for, to say that you are not going to need to take out any loans," Shevlin said. "But that will be harder to say later."

Shevlin used car loans as an example: A 20-something single person might commute by bike and take an Uber whenever he or she needs a car, he illustrated.

"But are they going to want to wait on an Uber in a few years when they have a baby, a baby seat and all the baby stuff?" he asked.

One way millennials differ from previous generations, Shevlin said, is in their interest in managing money and what money means to them.

"I don't think many, if any, of my generation knew what their credit scores were when they were 25 or the impact they can have on a purchase," Shelvin said. "But millennials know about credit scores and interest rates, and are interested in how their money is managed. That's different."

Jim Blaine, president/CEO of the $30.8 billion, Raleigh, N.C.-based State Employees' Credit Union, was also optimistic that millennial borrowers will pick up the slack for departing baby boomers.

Blaine pointed out millennials are still living with the immediate after-effects of a steep economic downturn, and face sluggish job growth and stagnant wages. If a millennial has a job and isn't certain that it won't go away in the next six months, and his or her wages remain stagnant, that probably won't make the person eager for a loan, Blaine said.

Blaine also said he has noticed the economic downturn and its aftermath delayed millennials from getting their start in life, and they are roughly five or six years behind where their parents and grandparents were at their age.

"But that doesn't mean they won't do the same things," Blaine said. "They will just do them at age 28, 29 and 30 and not at ages 23, 24 or 25."

The key point, Blaine insisted, is that while millennials might be doing the big things in life later than their parents did, there are no signs that they won't do them eventually.

"I haven't seen anything so far that makes me think millennials are not going to do those things." Blaine said. "Have you?"

Sean McDonald, president of Your True Potential LLC, a Houston, Texas-based leadership consulting firm, also expressed confidence that millennials will eventually come around as borrowers, but urged credit unions not to neglect Generation X, whose members were born between 1965 and 1980.

"It's Generation X, my generation, that has to buy homes now, are having kids now and are in our peak earning years now," McDonald said. "Yes, credit unions need to attract millennials, but don't neglect the loan demand you have now."

Like Blaine, McDonald noted millennials will face the same life decisions that tend to drive loan demand, and the very size of the cohort means there will be room for varying approaches to borrowing and economics.

"At around 70 million, they aren't all going to see things the same or act the same," he said.

He argued credit unions should focus on improving their operations and providing the best value possible to all of their borrowers, despite their generation.

He added millennials will be like previous generations in that they will want to borrow from lenders they can trust, and at prices and terms they can afford. Those are things credit unions offer now and should continue to offer in the future.