(Reuters) - Sun Life Financial Inc (>> Sun Life Financial Inc), , Canada's third-largest insurer by assets, reported a 13.3 percent fall in quarterly underlying profit, hurt by weakness in the United States.

The company's underlying net income fell to C$560 million ($428 million), or 91 Canadian cents per share, in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, from C$646 million, or C$1.05 per share, a year earlier.

Sun Life's underlying net income fell 9.7 percent in Canada, the company's biggest market, while it plunged 45 percent in the United States.

The Toronto-based company's net income rose 35.8 percent to C$728 million, or C$1.18 per share.

Total wealth sales rose 29.1 percent and life and health sales jumped 39.6 percent.

Sun Life's total assets under management rose 1.3 percent to C$903.3 billion at the end of the quarter.

Manulife Financial Corp (>> Manulife Financial Corp.), Canada's biggest life insurer, last week reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit and met a long-held target to achieve an annual profit of C$4 billion in 2016, helped by a strong performance in Asia.

(Reporting by Komal Khettry and Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

Stocks treated in this article : Manulife Financial Corp., Sun Life Financial Inc