Smokers have been told that they can save thousands of pounds on their life insurance policy if they give up their habit.
Giving up smoking not only provides benefits in terms of health, it can also result in thousands of pounds of savings, according to Abbey.
The firm has used the upcoming No Smoking Day on March 11th to highlight the fact that if Britain's 10.7 million smokers give up they could save £8,404 on life insurance cover each. It echoes a similar claim from Asda Life earlier in the month, which advised that ex-smokers see their life and critical illness premiums drop by 50 percent.
However, in general, insurance providers will only consider someone an ex-smoker when they have not had a cigarette in a year.
Despite this, Abbey stressed that giving up provides instant cash benefits which could be useful given the perilous state of the economy. Research by the firm found that if all of the country's smokers gave up, they could save a combined total of £71 million a year on disposable lighters.
Reza Attar-Zadeh, director of savings and investments at Abbey, commented: "Smoking is clearly 'dragging' down our savings potential, so it's great to see that so many people are poised to use the credit crunch to kick the habit. We wish them the very best of luck."
