The Bulgarian central bank has picked the Bulgarian unit of Deloitte as consultant for a financial health check on the Balkan country's lenders scheduled for next year, the bank said on its website on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

The central bank, eager to restore public trust in the banking system following the collapse of Bulgaria's fourth largest lender last year, plans to publish the results of the asset quality reviews and stress tests by the end of August.

Bulgaria needs to see the review's results before it decides whether to seek to become the first country outside the euro zone to join the European Central Bank's Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), set up in response to the global financial and euro zone crises.