About

Leadership

Max Kauderer

Co-Founder & CEO

“This industry is so legacy”

Russell Pekala

Co-Founder & COO

“Not as dumb as he looks”

Ryan Lee

Co-Founder & CPO

“On calls, they call me Head of I.T.”

Russell Pekala

Director of Ops

“Just be a good person, right?”

Pam Beardsell

Data Engineering

“Health insurance data is sneaky complicated”

Quinn Vinlove

Interface Engineering

“Here’s my headshot for the website”

Health insurance is invisible. Technically, it’s a contract, but it’s a contract members don’t read.

Health insurance is trust.

Patients trust health insurance with their personal data and financial security. Employers trust health insurance with their most valuable asset: their employees’ faith and goodwill.

At Yuzu, we believe we can create trust in administering health plans by being two things: honest and responsive.

trust = honest + responsive

How are we honest?

  • • We never charge hidden commissions. From stoploss marketing to PBM rebates to hidden fees like GA kickbacks — Yuzu says no. We only work with partners whose products and services best serve our shared customers.
  • • We don’t overpromise our capabilities, and turn down business that doesn’t fit what we are best at.
  • • We don’t hide data from employers or plan partners, instead we have a role-based permission model that gives partners and employers data to make smart decisions without compromising data privacy.

    • How are we responsive?

  • • All claims are manually adjusted, by a human. The leadership team at Yuzu has context on all complex claims and authority to make decisions about these claims.
  • • Our customer support team is not only US-based, but 100% Minnesota-born ensuring a standard of diligence and courtesy unmatched in the industry. Sense of humor? In healthy amounts.
  • • We pay for our mistakes. We acknowledge our mistakes and make the member and employer whole in cases where Yuzu mishandled a case or transaction.

    • If you're interested in working on these challenging problems, see our open positions ->

    Frequently Asked Questions

    We’re a third-party administrator that builds technology tools in-house as an included part of our services.

    By building things like dashboards, reporting, and point-of-service payment cards we are able to give new health insurance strategies the environment they need to succeed. By building so much in-house, we are able to be the source of truth members and employers depend on.

  • • We do not have custom networks. We believe care should be open, and cash-based.
  • • We are not qualified to do medical utilization management.
  • • We are not an insurance company, and have no financial incentive to deny claims in order to earn more money. Our job as a TPA is just to be a fair referee and ledger-keeper to ensure everyone’s interest in a group are well taken care of.

    • We are fully licensed to adjudicate claims in the majority of U.S. states, with plans to become licensed nationwide. Please reach out to us for details!

    We support non-network based health insurance plans. These plans typically have

    With how we built out our technology, our edge is our ability to support atypical plan designs that others can’t support. If you have a new, unique health plan, please reach out!

    We built our own EDI integrations technology (shoutout Pam), and can thus build deep integrations very quickly.

    We don’t charge for integrating new partners.

    We do not sell directly to employers, instead we serve employers after they have bought a health insurance plan designed by a Plan Designer that works with us.

    We administer health plans for all types of businesses, from 5 to 250 employees in a range of industries.

    The attribute that aligns all of our employer customers is they care about their employees and believe the status quo isn’t good enough for them.