Academic insights into exactly how microfinance institutions (MFIs) and their personnel work are surprisingly scarce. In our recent study, we provide detailed quantitative insights into the job of loan officers, arguably the key microfinance personnel, in India. We document loan officers’ tasks, their time use and output, and describe how they adapted to the new challenges arising with Covid-19. There has been a lot of attention to how lockdowns and restrictions affected borrowers’ ability to repay, and on the mechanics of repayment, but much less on the impact on loan officers themselves and how they adapted to a sudden major change in their work. In this post, we’ll summarize a few of the key findings of our study that shed light on important issues for the MFI sector in planning for recovery.