Ljubljana - Slovenia's largest banks, NLB and NKBM, have announced they will stop charging negative interest rates on large deposits on the accounts of individuals and legal entities starting from 1 August, after the ECB raised its key interest rates on Thursday. Smaller banks are taking similar measures as well.

"Following the decision by the Governing Council of the European Central Bank to raise key interest rates in the euro zone by 0.5 percentage points, NLB has taken a decision to stop charging compensation for high balances on accounts and in deposit transactions," the bank said on Friday.

A similar message came from NKBM. "From 1 August, the bank will abolish the deposit charge for customers who are natural and legal persons. This means that we will no longer charge the fee, regardless of their account credit," the bank said in a press release.

Negative rates on large deposits will also be discontinued from August by Sparkasse. The bank only imposed such charges on legal entities. The DBS bank will discontinue such charges on physical persons in August.

The banks SKB, Unicredit and Delavska Hranilnica had previously announced they would lift the charges as soon as the ECB decided to end negative interest rates.