ROYAL Bank of Scotland's charm offensive towards small businesses and homeowners should be unambiguously welcomed in these icy economic times.
And, as new RBS chief executive Stephen Hester says today on the new six months' period of grace for home loan defaulters, the move makes commercial sense.
The bank also gains kudos for displaying awareness of the greater moral pressures on the banks to act more caringly following the ride into recession they have taken us all on.
It is not in banks' medium-term interest to see a wave of mortgage payment-defaulters triggering both a sharp rise in bad debts and probable public opprobrium towards large-scale repossessions.
RBS is therefore obviously playing a longer game in the court of public opinion. Let's hope other banks follow suit.
The initiative follows on from the Royal's small business move last week in freezing the rates on overdrafts for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for 12 months.
That will also be very helpful to ease cashflow and free up working capital for the SMEs.
With no wish to be churlish about two very welcome initiatives, however, in the wider picture it also shows how the government's new 58 per cent majority holding in RBS is already making itself felt.
That's not to suggest the government is ordering such initiatives. I don't think Hester would wear such pressure for a minute, and City analysts who know him say the same.
The 'arm's length' company set up to oversee the taxpayers' extraordinary investments in some British banks, UK Financial Investments, has said it is no part of its province to get involved in day-to-day commercial decision-making at the banks.
And RBS's positive moves for SMEs and the initiative to give at least six months breathing space to homeowners who fall behind with mortgage payments fall squarely into that category.
But that's the beauty of the arrangement for the government. Given the scale of its holding in RBS, it doesn't need to be heavy-handed on insisting on such consumer-friendly initiatives.
The pressure to do so can remain unspoken. It just hangs in the air, probably subtly influencing RBS's decisions rather than dictating them.
Perhaps sometimes not so subtle. Look at how Alistair Darling singled out RBS's move on freezing SME overdraft rates in his budget, and explicitly saying he would like it to be taken as a template by other banks.
We could see similar if the government is left with a 43 per cent stake in any Lloyds TSB/HBOS combination.
Those banks will make their decisions themselves, without any Treasury strong-arm tactics. But greater sensitivity, silently, will probably move higher up the agenda.
Martin Flanagan is The Scotsman's City Editor. You can read more of his blogs at the scotsman.com Business Club. Click here to find out more