The paper proposes a rationale for joint financing based on the reduction of audit costs. Within a costly state verification model with endogenous audit and commitment, it shows that jointly financing multiple independent projects mitigates credit rationing and reduces the deadweight loss of inefficient audits as compared with standalone finance. The results hold not only when coinsurance, but also when risk-contamination arises from conglomeration, provided information sharing among the divisions of the conglomerate is feasible. The rationale behind the results is to be found in the incentive effects brought about by optimally chosen variable intensity audits, in which the worst outcomes are audited intensively, while the intermediate ones residually. This implies that for certain parameters' regions, the optimal contract is a standard debt contract.