People may be more familiar with penguins marching, but the month of March sees a march of pension savers checking up on their retirement funds.

Analysis by Hargreaves Lansdown has found that March sees a spike in people logging into their pension accounts, checking the tax relief calculator, paying money in, starting regular payments, reading up about drawdown, and taking pension payments. Hargreaves Lansdown senior pension analyst Nathan Long explained that the “hustle and bustle” of the end of the tax year, acts as a “significant catalyst”.

Not put off by snooping eyes, the analysis also found that in the week the most popular time people check their pensions is on a commute, using a mobile phone. On the weekend, people prefer to check it over breakfast with a coffee and croissant.

“The imminent end of the tax year means March is the most popular month to log into your pension account - alongside May. In 2017, 1 March was the busiest day of all. It’s also the month where our tax relief calculator sees the most action. This doesn’t come as a huge surprise, because the end of tax year tends to force decisions about how to offset your tax bill,” Long said.

“Unsurprisingly, therefore, March and April see the most people paying into their pension. March is also the month for setting up new regular savings into a pension. There’s a good chance that the end of tax year rush has been hectic enough to inspire people to be better prepared for next year, and manage their finances more effectively in the future.

“March doesn’t just see a rush to put money into pensions, it’s also pensions withdrawal season. Pension savers are most likely to look into pension drawdown in March, and most likely to take drawdown payments – in order to squeeze them in before the end of the tax year.”

After the rush of the end of the tax year, April can lay claim to one of the less cheerful aspects of pension planning – visits to our longevity calculator. However, Hargreaves Lansdown said this is actually far more positive than it initially sounds, because it’s a sign that people are considering longevity when they revisit the amount of income they are withdrawing at the beginning of the tax year.

The other spike in longevity calculators is in December, when there’s a chance people are wondering how many more Christmases they are going to have to pay for. April 2017 also saw the busiest Bank Holiday for pension account log-ins, as people shunned their friends and family on Good Friday in order to check their pension accounts.

Regardless of the time of year, landmark days in the stockmarkets tend to see spikes in pension activity. The second busiest day of 2017 was May 16, when the FTSE 100 reached over 7,500 for the first time.

Regardless of the time of year, people are most likely to check the value of their pensions on a Tuesday, narrowly pushing Wednesday into second place. Overall though pension savers are weekday watchers, as 90 per cent of log-ins happen during the week. The busiest times for logging in are 8am – 10am on a weekday.

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