ANYONE who sets up a business is greatly to be admired. From a one-man fruit and veg stall to something that turns into a global enterprise, virtually every business starts out as a small concern, with someone being prepared to take a risk.

Not for the entrepreneur is the safety net or comfort blanket of paid leave, sick pay or a final salary pension scheme; being in business is an exercise in risk and restraint.

I know millionaire businessmen who have been through the very leanest of times, working every hour God sends to make their companies profitable and robbing Peter to pay Paul when the going gets tough.

Cash flow, bank interest rates on business borrowings, staff costs, capital costs... those in business spend an awful lot of time worrying about all of those and more.

Being in business is not for the faint-hearted. So I was pleased this week to learn that the Royal Bank of Scotland - bailed out by us taxpayers following chronic mismanagement - has come in for strong criticism about the way it has treated many small business customers.

The "turnaround unit" of the bank mistreated its customers over many years, a report by the Financial Conduct Authority has found, although it has ruled the bank's Global Restructuring Group did not force businesses to go bust in order to profit from them.

In effect the bank's GRG arm stood accused of helping to push many small firms into bankruptcy in order to pick up their assets, following the financial crash of 2008 - which brought down RBS, under its stewardship of Fred "the shred" Goodwin, who was subsequently stripped of his knighthood.

After a lengthy review, the FCA has found that there was "widespread inappropriate treatment" of smaller customers, many of whom did indeed go bust during the period under scrutiny.

On the BBC news on Monday night, the owner of one such small business was interviewed: an intelligent and principled man who had set up a business and then, when he got into financial difficulties, found himself at the mercy of RBS and its restructuring - and lost the business he loved and had worked so hard in as a result.

The experience left him a broken man and he was in tears during the interview.

Such is the culture of some of our financial organisations - and I include Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs in this - when it comes to dealing with our nation's smaller entrepreneurs.

Far from doing everything possible to help, nurture and encourage our risk-taking community of business owners, these organisations all too often bully, penalise and make unreasonable demands on the very people who are working so hard to keep money flowing in to the banks and the exchequer.

RBS has been found to have acted inappropriately towards some 92 per cent of businesses which went into the GRG division.

These businesses went there for help - but received precious little, it would appear.

One of the biggest issues here, it seems to me, is that a corporate culture has taken over our banks, with the human element all too often appearing to be absent.

Long gone are the days when one knew one's bank manager and when a business owner could go and speak to someone in person who knew them and understood their business.

Today, I imagine most small business owners have no human contact with the people who make decisions about their business accounts, their overdrafts or their borrowing arrangements.

How easy it is for someone sitting at a computer to send an automatically-generated letter calling in someone's business overdraft or to turn down a loan extension - or to make any number of easy decisions (easy for them, as the employee is taking no financial risk themself) which can quite literally break a business.

Given that RBS is effectively a nationalised company, the behaviour of many of its employees has been appalling - and it is no surprise that the FCA has warned that there could be grounds for further action.

Being in business is something which should be encouraged and championed.

The nation's risk takers should be feted and supported, not driven to despair and destruction by faceless bank employees with a "computer says no" attitude to the people they are supposed to be helping.

As Britain approaches Brexit, it is more important than ever before that our nation's entrepreneurs are given the help they need.

The FCA may have stopped short of saying RBS pushed customers into bankruptcy but they are clear that mistreatment took place.

For a bank that had to be bailed out by the very people it is supposed to serve, that is a damning indictment on its practices and its principles.

I hope the customers who have suffered at its hands receive the compensation they deserve - although I fear it will be far too late for many of them.