Real estate tops Chinese insurers' choices for non-traditional investment at home and abroad, a study by international accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers showed on Wednesday.

More than 81 percent of respondents choose real estate as their industry preference, followed by finance and insurance, transportation and warehousing, and the production and supply of electricity, gas and water.

The choices were the same for their overseas investment, with 34.8 percent of respondents choosing real estate as their preferred category.

Approval was given in the second half of 2010 for insurance companies to access non-traditional investment.

By the end of the third quarter of 2013, Chinese insurers' investment totaled 7.41 trillion yuan ($1.19 trillion), with the proportion of non-traditional investment increasing to 15.15 percent from 9 percent at the end of 2012, when 6.85 trillion yuan had been invested.