Get a £14,000 windfall if you hold off smoking "They say 'there's no smoke without fire' and for addicted Britons the cost of cigarettes no doubt burns a hole in their pocket," said Emma Walker of Moneysupermarket.com. But, five years down the line from the smoking ban, anyone who kicked the habit for good will not only have saved a packet, they'll have taken a big step to improving their health. The cost that smoking adds to a premium for life insurance or critical illness is considerable and should be one reason for anyone to consider quitting. It makes sense. If you are a smoker you are deemed higher risk and therefore your premiums are higher than for someone who lives a healthier lifestyle - and the savings are not to be scoffed at. For instance, non-smokers can save more than a third on single life insurance cover. For example, a male smoker with a policy from Ageas would pay £10.59 a month, but premiums would fall to £6.81 if they quit the habit - a saving of £1,134 over the term. "Looking at the savings that can be made over the long term can be a real eye-opener," said Ms Walker. The better your health, the cheaper your premium and by quitting you won't be burning your hard-earned cash either. What's more, other protection policies such as critical illness, which pays out a tax-free lump sum on diagnosis of certain specified illnesses, and income protection, which insures a proportion of your income in the event of unemployment due to ill health, will also be cheaper for non-smokers. Figures from protection specialists LifeSearch show that a 35-year-old smoker could get £1,500 a month worth of income protection cover over 20 years with a three-month deferral period for £28.58 a month with PruProtect, but a non-smoker could get the same cover for just £21.17 - a saving of £1,037 over the term. However, the difference in premiums is even starker when you consider £150,000 of life insurance, including critical illness cover, over the next 20 years. Here, a smoker would pay £69.13 a month from Scottish Provident, while a non-smoker would pay just £42.35 - £6,427 less over the term of the policy. "Smoking is one of the key factors insurers use in working out premiums, along with age and your health, and can double the premiums you pay if you smoke," said Matt Morris of LifeSearch. To get non-smoker rates you must have not smoked for 12 months or more and not used any nicotine replacement products either. If insurers are worried that you are not telling the truth about your smoker status, they can ask you to take a cotinine test, which checks for nicotine in the body. Cotinine is a chemical that is made by the body from nicotine, so by measuring levels of this chemical it is easy to establish how much someone is smoking. It can be measured by a blood, urine or saliva test, although insurers typically use a saliva test, after which they seek corroboration from the applicant's doctor.