It's about time!
This phenomenon has been around since 2014 when the then ECB President Mario Draghi introduced negative interest rates for banks.
Draghi had said at the time that these interest rates were for the “banks, not for the people”.
That didn't stop the banks from introducing negative interest rates, custody fees and deposit fees for their customers as well.
Initially only for very large assets, but the allowances continued to fall.
Paying money for leaving your savings to the bank for a while so that they can work with them – savers couldn’t and didn’t want to get used to that.
It is therefore good that the era of negative interest rates is now coming to an end.
The first easing of the allowances are there;
if the ECB raises its interest rates, further simplifications will follow simply by linking many custody fees to the ECB interest rate.
Nevertheless, the best of all possible worlds remains a long way off for savers: real interest rates, i.e. interest on savings after deducting inflation, are likely to remain negative.